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CHIMNEY-CORNER. 



BY 



CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD, 

AUTHOR OF "house AND HOME PAPEUS " AND " LITTLE FOXES. 





/ BOSTON: 

TICK NOR AND FIELDS 
1868. 



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\ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year iS68, by 

T I C K N O R AND FIELDS, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



University Press: Welch, Biget.ow, & Co., 
Camduiuge. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

I. What will You do with Her ? or, The Wo- 
man Question i 

II. Woman's Sphere 27 

in. A Family-Talk on Reconstruction . . 63 

IV. Is Woman a Worker .> 100 

V. The Transition 123 

VI. Bodily Religion : A Sermon on Good Health 142 

VII. How shall we entertain our Company? . 166 

VIII. How shall we be amused? .... 187 

IX. Dress, or who makes the Fashions . . 205 

X. What are the Sources of Beauty in Dress 235 

XI. The Cathedral 259 

XII. The New Year 278 

XIII. The Noble Army of Martyrs. . . . 297 



\ 



THE CHIMNEY-CORNER. 



I. 



WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER? OR, 
THE WOMAN QUESTION. 

" T T 7 ELL, what will you do with her?" said I to 
» * my wife. 

My wife had just come down from an interview 
with a pale, faded-looking young woman in rusty black 
attire, who had called upon me on the very common 
supposition that I was an editor of the "Atlantic 
Monthly." 

By the by, this is a mistake that brings me, Chris- 
topher Crowfield, many letters that do not belong to 
me, and which might with equal pertinency be ad- 
dressed, " To the Man in the Moon." Yet these let- 
ters often make my heart ache, — they speak so of 
people who strive and sorrow and want help ; and it 
is hard to be called on in plaintive tones for help 
which you know it is perfectly impossible for you to 
give. 

For instance, you get a letter in a delicate hand, 

I A 



2 TJic CJiinuicy-Corncr. 

setting forth the old distress, — she is poor, and she 
has looking to her for support those that are poorer 
and more helpless than herself: she has tried sewing, 
but can make little at it ; tried teaching, but cannot 
now get a school, — all places being filled, and more 
than filled ; at last has tried literature, and written 
some little tilings, of which she sends you a modest 
specimen, and wants your opinion whether she can 
gain her living by writing. You run over tlie articles, 
and perceive at a glance that there is no kind of hope 
or use in her trying to do anything at literature ; and 
then you ask yourself, mentally, "What is to be done 
with lier ? What can she do ? " 

Such was the application that had come to me this 
morning, — only, instead of by note, it came, as 1 
have said, in the person of the applicant, a thin, deli- 
cate, consumptive-looking being, wearing that rusty 
mourning which speaks sadly at once of heart-bereave- 
ment and material poverty. 

My usual course is to turn such cases over to Mrs. 
Crowfield ; and it is to be confessed that this worthy 
woman si)ends a large portion of her time, and wears 
out an extraordinary amount of shoe-leather, in per- 
forming the duties of a self-constituted intelligence- 
olhce. 

Talk of giving money to the poor! what is that, 
compared to giving sympathy, thought, time, taking 



W/iat will You -do with Her? 3 

their burdens upon you, sharing their perplexities ? 
They who are able to buy off every application at the 
door of their heart wjth a five or ten dollar bill are 
those who free themselves at least expense. 

My wife had communicated to our friend, in the 
gentlest tones and in the blandest manner, that her 
poor little pieces, however interesting to her own 
household circle, had nothing in them wherewith to 
enable her to make her way in the thronged and 
crowded thoroughfare of letters, — that they had no 
more strength or adaptation to win bread for her than 
a broken-winged butterfly to draw a plough ; and it 
took some resolution in the background of her ten- 
derness to make the poor applicant entirely certain 
of this. In cases like this, absolute certainty is the 
very greatest, the only true kindness. 

It was grievous, my wife said, to see the discouraged 
shade which passed over her thin, tremulous features, 
when this certainty forced itself upon her. It is hard, 
when sinking in the waves, to see the frail bush at 
which the hand clutches uprooted ; hard, when alone 
in the crowded thoroughfare of travel, to have one's 
last bank-note declared a counterfeit. I knew I 
should not be able to see her face, under the shade of 
this disappointment ; and so, coward that I was, I 
turned this trouble, where I have turned so many 
others, upon my wife. 



4 T^ie Chimney-Comer, 

"Well, what shall we do with her? " said I. 

" I really don't know/' said my wife, musingly. 

" Do you think we could get that school in Taunton 
for her ? " 

" Impossible ; Mr. Herbert told me he had already 
twelve applicants for it." 

" Could n't you get her plain sewing ? Is she handy 
with her needle ? " 

" She has tried that, but it brings on a pain in her 
side, and cough ; and the doctor has told her it will 
not do for her to confine herself." 

" How is her handwriting ? Does she write a good 
hand?" 

" Only passable." 

" Because," said I, " I was thinking if I could get 
Steele and Simpson to give her law-papers to copy." 

" They have more copyists than they need now ; 
and, in fact, this woman does not write the sort of 
hand at all that would enable her to get on as a 
copyist." 

" Well," said I, turning uneasily in my chair, and at 
last hitting on a bright masculine expedient, " i '11 tell 
you what must be done. She must get married." 

" My dear," said my wife, " marrying for a living is 
the very hardest way a woman can take to get it. 
Even marrying for love often turns out badly enougli. 
Witness poor Jane." 



W/iai will Vou do with Her? 5 

Jane was one of the large number of people whom 
it seemed my wife's fortune to carry through life on 
her back. She was a pretty, smiling, pleasing daugh- 
ter of Erin, who had been in our family originally as 
nursery-maid. I had been greatly pleased in watching 
a little idyllic affair growing up between her and a 
joyous, good-natured young Irishman, to whom at last 
we married her. Mike soon after, however, took to 
drinking and unsteady courses ; and the result has 
been to Jane only a yearly baby, with poor health, 
and no money. 

"In fact," said my wife, "if Jane had only kept sin- 
gle, she could have made her own way well enough, 
and might have now been in good health and had a 
pretty sum in the savings bank. As it is, I must carry 
not only her, but her three children, on my back." 

"You ought to drop her, my dear. You really 
ought not to burden yourself v/ith other people's af- 
fairs as you do," said I, inconsistently. 

" How ca7t I drop her ? Can I help knowing that 
she is poor and suffering? And if I drop her, who 
will take her up ? " 

Now there is a way of getting rid of cases of this 
kind, spoken of in a quaint old book, which occurred 
strongly to me at this moment : — 

" If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of 
daily food, and one of you say unto them, '■ Depart in 



6 The Chiumey-Corner. 

peace, be ye warmed and filled/ notwithstanding ye 
give them not those things which are needful to the 
body, what doth it profit ? " 

I must confess, notwithstanding the strong point of 
the closing question, I looked with an evil eye of long- 
ing on this very easy way of disposing of such cases. 
A i^y^ sympathizing words, a few expressions of hope 
that I did not feel, a line written to turn the case into 
somebody else's hands, — any expedient, in fact, to 
hide the longing eyes and imploring hands from my 
sight, was what my carnal nature at this moment 
greatly craved. 

"Besides," said my wife, resuming the thread of 
her thoughts in regard to the subject just now before 
us, " as to marriage, it 's out of the question at 
present for this poor child ; for the man she loved 
and would have married lies low in one of the graves 
before Richmond. It 's a sad story, — one of a thou- 
sand like it. She brightened for a few moments, and 
looked almost handsome, when she spoke of his 
bravery and goodness. Her father and lover have 
both died in this war. Her only brother has returned 
from it a broken-down cripple, and she has him and 
her poor old mother to care for, and so she seeks 
work. I told her to come again to-morrow, and I 
would look about for her a little to-day." 

"Let me see, how many are now down on your 



W/iat will You do with Her? 7 

list to be looked about for, Mrs. Crowfield ? — some 
twelve or thirteen, are there not ? You 've got Tom's 
sister disposed of finally, I hope, — that 's a com- 
fort ! " 

" Well, I 'm sorry to say she came back on my hands 
yesterday," said my wife, patiently. " She is a foolish 
young thing, and said she did n't like living out in the 
country. I 'm sorry, because the Morrises are an 
excellent family, and she might have had a life-home 
there, if she had only been steady, and chosen to 
behave herself properly. But yesterday I found her 
back on her mother's hands again ; and the poor 
woman told me that the dear child never could bear 
to be separated from her, and that she had n't the 
heart to send her back." 

" And in short," said I, " she gave you notice that 
you must provide for Miss O'Connor in some more 
agreeable way. Cross that name off your list, at any 
rate. That woman and girl need a few hard raps in 
the school of experience before you can do anything 
for them." 

" I think I shall," said my long-suffering wife ; " but 
it 's a pity to see a young thing put in the direct road 
to ruin." 

" It is one of the inevitables," said I, " and we 
must save our strength for those that are willing to 
help themselves." 



8 The CJiiDUhy-Coriur. 

"What's all this talk about?" said 13ob, coming in 
upon us rather brusquely, 

" O, as usual, the old question," said I, — " ' What 's 
to be done with her ? ' " 

" ^^'ell," said Bob, "it's exactly what I've come to 
talk with mother about. Since she keeps a distressed- 
women's agency-office, I 've come to consult her about 
Llarianne. That woman will die before six months 
arc out, a victim to high civilization and the Paddies. 
There we arc, twelve miles out from Boston, in a 
country villa so convenient that every part of it might 
almost do its own work, — everything arranged in the 
most convenient, contiguous, self-adjusting, self-acting, 
patent-right, perfective manner, — and yet, I tell you, 
Marianne will die of that house. It will yet be re- 
corded on her tombstone, ' Died of conveniences.' 
For myself, what I languish for is a log cabin, with a 
bed in one corner, a trundle-bed underneath for the 
children, a lircplace only six feet off, a table, four 
chairs, one kettle, a coffee-pot, and a tin baker, — that's 
all. I lived deliciously in an establishment of this kind 
last summer, when I was up at Lake Superior ; and I 
am convinced, if I could move Marianne into it at 
once, that she would become a healthy and a happy 
woman. Her life is smothered out of her with com- 
forts ; we have too many rooms, too many carpets, too 
many vases and knick-knacks, loo much cliina and sil- 



What will Yoii do zvitJi Ilcr? 9 

vcr ; she has too many laces and dresses and bonnets; 
the children all have too many clothes ; — in fact, to 
put it scripturally, our riches are corrupted, our gar- 
ments are moth-eaten, our gold and our silver is can- 
kered, — and, in short, Marianne is sick in bed, and I 
have come to the agency-office-for-distressed-women to 
take you out to attend to her. 

" The fact is," continued Bob, " that since our cook 
married, and Alice went to California, there seems to 
be no possibility of putting our domestic cabinet upon 
any permanent basis. The number of female persons 
that have been through our house, and the ravages 
they have wrought on it for the last six months, pass 
belief. I had yesterday a bill of sixty dollars' plumb- 
ing to pay for damages of various kinds which had had 
to be repaired in our very convenient water-works ; and 
the blameof each particular one had been bandied like 
a shuttlecock among our three household divinities. 
Biddy privately assured my wife that Kate was in the 
habit of emptying dust-pans of rubbish into the main 
drain from the chambers, and washing any little extra 
bits down through the bowls ; and, in fact, when one 
of the bathing-room bowls had overflowed so as to 
damage the frescoes below, my wife, with great delicacy 
and precaution, interrogated Kate as to whether she 
had followed her instructions in the care of the water- 
pipes. Of course she protested the most immaculate 
1* 



10 TJie CJdinncy-Corncr. 

care and circumspection. * Sure, and she knew how 
careful one ought to be, and was n't of the hkes of 
thim as would n't mind what throuble they made, — 
like Biddy, who would throw trash and hair in the 
pipes, and niver listen to her tellin' ; sure, and had n't 
she broken the pipes in the kitchen, and lost the stop- 
pers, as it was a shame to see in a Christian house ? ' 
Ann, the third girl, being privately questioned, blamed 
Biddy on Monday, and Kate on Tuesday j on Wednes- 
day, however, she exonerated both ; but on Thursday, 
being in a high quarrel with both, she departed, accusing 
them severally, not only of all the evil practices afore- 
said, but of lying, and stealing, and all other miscella- 
neous wickednesses that came to hand. Whereat the 
two thus accused rushed in, bewailing themselves and 
cursing Ann in alternate strophes, averring that she had 
given the baby laudanum, and, taking it out riding, had 
stopped for hours with it in a filthy lane, where the 
scarlet fever was said to be rife, — in short, made so 
fearful a picture, that Marianne gave up the child's life 
at once, and has taken to her bed. I have endeavored 
all I could to quiet her, by telling her that the scarlet- 
fever story was probably an extemporaneous work of 
fiction, got up to gratify the Hibernian anger at Ann ; 
and that it was n't in the least worth while to believe 
one thing more than another from the fact that any of 
the tribe said it. But she refuses to be comforted, and 



What will You do with Her? ii 

is so Utopian as to lie there, crying, ' O, if I only 
could get one that I could trust, — one that really would 
speak the truth to me, — one that I might know really 
went where she said she went, and really did as she 
said she did ! ' To have to live so, she says, and bring 
up little children with those she can't trust out of her 
sight, whose word is good for nothing, — to feel that her 
beautiful house and her lovely things are all going to 
rack and ruin, and she can't take care of them, and 
can't see where or when or how the mischief is done, — 
in short, the poor child talks as women do who are 
violently attacked with housekeeping fever tending to 
congestion of the brain. She actually yesterday told 
me that she wished, on the whole, she never had got 
married, which I take to be the most positive indica- 
tion of mental alienaticfn." 

" Here," said I, " we .behold at this moment two 
women dying for the want of what they can mutually 
give one another, — each having a supply of what the 
other needs, but held back by certain invisible cob- 
webs, slight but strong, from coming to each other's 
assistance. Marianne has money enough, but she 
wants a helper in her family, such as all her money 
has been hitherto unable to buy ; and here, close at 
hand, is a woman who wants home-shelter, healthy, va- 
ried, active, cheerful labor, with nourishing food, kind 
care, and good wages. What hinders these women 



12 The CJiimney-Comer. 

from rushing to the help of one another, just as two 
drops of water on a leaf rush together and make one ? 
Nothing but a miserable prejudice, — but a prejudice 
so strong that women will starve in any other mode of 
life, rather than accept competency and comfort in 
this." 

" You don't mean," said my wife, " to propose that 
owr protegee should go to Marianne as a servant ? " 

" I do say it would be the best thing for her to do, 
— the only opening that I see, and a very good one, too, 
it is. Just look at it. Her bare living at this moment 
cannot cost her less than five or six dollars a week, — 
everything at the present time is so very dear in the 
city. Now by what possible calling open to her ca- 
pacity can she pay her board and washing, fuel and 
lights, and clear a hundred and some odd dollars a 
year ? She could not do it as a district school-teacher ; 
she certainly cannot, with her feeble health, do it by 
plain sewing ; she could not do it as a copyist. A ro- 
bust woman might go into a factory, and earn more ; 
but factory work is unintermitted, twelve hours daily, 
week in and out, in the same movement, in close air, 
amid the clatter of machinery ; and a person delicately 
organized soon sinks under it. It takes a stolid, en- 
during temperament to bear factory labor. Now look 
at Marianne's house and family, and see what is in- 
sured to yo\xr protegee there. 



W/iat zvill You do ivith Her? 13 

" In the first place, a home, — a neat, quiet cham- 
ber, quite as good as she has probably been accus- 
tomed to, — the very best of food, served in a pleasant, 
light, airy kitchen, which is one of the most agreeable 
rooms in the house, and the table and table-service 
quite equal to those of most farmers and mechanics. 
Then her daily tasks would be light and varied, — 
some sweeping, some dusting, the washing and dress- 
ing of children, the care of their rooms and the nur- 
sery, — all of it the most healthful, the most natural 
work of a woman, — work alternating with rest, and 
diverting thought from painful subjects by its variety, 
— and what is more, a kind of work in which a good 
Christian woman might have satisfaction, as feeling 
herself useful in the highest and best way ; for the 
child's nurse, if she be a pious, well-educated woman, 
may make the whole course of nursery-life an educa- 
tion in goodness. Then, what is far different from 
many other modes of gaining a livelihood, a woman in 
this capacity can make and feel herself really and 
truly beloved. The hearts of little children are easily 
gained, and their love is real and warm, and no true 
woman can become the object of it without feeling 
her own life made brighter. Again, she would have 
in Marianne a sincere, warm - hearted friend, who 
would care for her tenderly, respect her sorrows, shel- 
ter her feelings, be considerate of her wants, and in 



14 The CJiiuincy-Corncr. 

every way aid her in the cause she has most at heart, 
— the succor of her family. There are many ways 
besides her wages in which she would infalHbly be 
assisted by Marianne, so that the probabihty would be 
that she could send her little salary almost untouched 
to those for whose support she was toiling, — all this 
on her part." 

" But," added my wife, " on the other hand, she 
would be obliged to associate and be ranked with 
common Irish servants." 

" Well," I answered, " is there any occupation, by 
which any of us gain our living, which has not its dis- 
agreeable side ? Does not the lawyer spend all his 
days either in a dusty office or in the foul air of a 
court-room ? Is he not brought into much disagree- 
able contact wdth the lowest class of society ? Are 
not his labors dry and hard and exhausting? Does 
not the blacksmith spend half his life in soot and 
grime, that he may gain a competence for the other 
half.-* If this woman w^ere to work in a factory, would 
she not often be brought into associations distasteful 
to her ? Might it not be the same in any of the arts 
and trades in which a living is to be got? There 
must be unpleasant circumstances about earning a liv- 
ing in any w^ay ; only I maintain that those which a 
woman would be likely to meet with as a servant in a 
refined, well-bred, Christian family would be less than 



What will You do with Her? 15 

in almost any other calling. Are there no trials to a 
woman, I beg to know, in teaching a district school, 
where all the boys, big and little, of a neighborhood 
congregate? For my part, were it my daughter or 
sister who was in necessitous circumstances, I would 
choose for her a position such as I name, in a kind, 
intelligent. Christian family, before many of those to 
which women do devote themselves." 

"Well," said Bob, "all this has a good sound 
enough, but it 's quite impossible. It 's true, I verily 
believe, that such a kind of servant in our family 
would really prolong Marianne's life years, — that it 
would improve her health, and be an unspeakable 
blessing to her, to me, and the children, — and I 
would almost go down on my knees to a really well- 
educated, good, American woman who would come 
into our family, and take that place ; but I know it 's 
perfectly vain and useless to expect it. You know 
we have tried the experiment two or three times of 
having a person in our family who should be on the 
footing of a friend, yet do the duties of a servant, and 
that we never could make it work well. These half- 
and-half people are so sensitive, so exacting in their 
demands, so hard to please, that we have come to the 
firm determination that we will have no sliding-scale 
in our family, and that whoever we are to depend on 
must come with bona-Jide willingness to take the posi- 



1 6 TJic CJiiuiucy-Conicr. 

tion of a servant, such as that position is in our house ; 
and ///<//, I suppose, your /roti'^^ce would never do, 
even if she could tliereby Hve easier, have less hard 
work, better health, and quite as much money as she 
could earn in any other way." 

" She would consider it a personal degradation, I 
suppose," said my wife. 

" And yet, if she only knew it," said Bob, " I should 
respect her flir more profoundly for her willingness to 
take that position, when adverse fortune has shut 
other doors." 

" Well, now," said I, " this woman is, as I under- 
stand, the daughter of a respectable stone-mason ; 
and the domestic habits of her early life have prob- 
ably been economical and simple. Like most of our 
mechanics' daughters, she has received in one of our 
high schools an education which has cultivated and 
developed her mind far beyond those of her parents 
and the associates of her childhood. This is a com- 
mon fiict in our American life. By our high schools 
the daughters of plain workingmen are raised to a 
state of intellectual culture which seems to make the 
disposition of them in any kind of industrial calling a 
difficult one. They all want to teach school, — and 
school-teaching, consequently, is an overcrowded pro- 
fession, — and, failing that, there is only millinery and 
dressmaking. Of late, it is true, efforts have been 



What will You do with Her? ij 

made in various dircclions to widen their sphere. 
Type-setting and book-keeping are in some instances 
beginning to be open to them. 

" All this time thee is lying, neglected and de- 
spised, a calling to which womanly talents and in- 
stincts are peculiarly fitted, — a calling full of oppor- 
tunities of the most lasting usefulness, — a calling 
which insures a settled home, respectaljle protection, 
healthful exercise, good air, good food, and good 
wages, — a calling in which a woman may make real 
friends, and secure to herself warm affection ; and yet 
this calling is the one always refused, shunned, con- 
temned, left to the alien and the stranger, and that 
simply and solely because it bears the name of servant. 
A Christian woman, who holds the name of Christ in 
her heart in true devotion, would think it the greatest 
possible misfortune and degradation to become like 
him in taking upon her ' the form of a servant.' The 
founflcr of Christianity says, ' Whether is greater, he 
that sitteth at meat or he that scrveth ? But / am 
among you as he that scrveth.' I3ut notwithstanding 
these so plain declarations of Jesus, we find that 
scarce any one in a Christian land will accept real 
advantages of position and employment that come 
with th.at name and condition," 

" I suppose," said my wife, " I could prevail upon 
tliis woman to do all the duties of the situation, if she 

B 



1 8 TJic CJiimiuy-Corncr. 

could be, as they phrase it, ' treated as one of the 
family.'" 

" That is to say,'' said Bob, " if she could sit with 
us at the same table, be introduced to our friends, and 
be in all respects as one of us. Now as to this, I am 
free to say that I have no false aristocratic scruples. 
I consider every well-educated woman as fully my 
equal, not to say my superior ; but it does not follow 
from this that she would be one whom I should wish 
to make a third party with me and my wife at meal- 
times. Our meals are often our seasons of privacy, 
— the times when we wish in perfect unreserve to 
speak of matters that concern ourselves and our fam- 
ily alone. Even invited guests and family friends 
would not be always welcome, however agreeable at 
times. Now a woman may be perfectly worthy of re- 
spect, and we may be perfectly respectful to her, 
whom nevertheless we do not wish to take into the 
circle of intimate friendship. I regard the position 
of a woman who comes to perform domestic service 
as I do any other business relation. We have a very 
respectable young lady in our employ, who does 
legal copying for us, and all is perfectly pleasant and 
agreeable in our mutual relations ; but the case would 
be far otherwise, were she to take it into her head 
that we treated her with contempt, because my wife 
did not callon her, and because she was not occasion- 



What will You do with II erf 19 

ally invited to tea. Besides, I apprehend that a 
woman of quick sensibilities, employed in domestic 
service, and who was so far treated as a member of 
the family as to share our table, would fmd her posi- 
tion even more painful and embarrassing than if she 
took once for all the position of a servant. We could 
not control the feelings of our friends ; we could not 
always insure that they would be free from aristocratic 
prejudice, even were we so ourselves. We could not 
force her upon their acquaintance, and she might feel 
far more slighted than she would in a position where 
no attentions of any kind were to l;e expected. Be- 
sides which, I have always noticed that persons stand- 
ing in this uncertain position are objects of peculiar 
antipathy to the servants in full ; that they are the 
cause of constant and secret cabals and discontents ; 
and that a family where the two orders exist has al- 
ways raked up in it the smouldering embers of a quar- 
rel ready at any time to l:)urst out into open feud." 

" Well," said I, " here lies the problem of American 
life. Half our women, like Marianne, are being faded 
and made old before their time by exhausting endeav- 
ors to lead a life of high civilization and refinement 
with only such untrained help as is washed up on our 
shores by the tide of emigration. Our houses arc 
built upon a plan that precludes the necessity of much 
hard labor, but requires rather careful and nice hand- 



20 The CJiimney-Corner. 

ling. A well-trained, intelligent woman, who had 
vitalized her finger-ends by means of a well-developed 
brain, could do all the work of such a house with 
comparatively little physical fatigue. So stands the 
case as regards our houses. Now over against the 
women that are perishing in them from too much care, 
there is another class of American women that are 
wandering up and down, perishing for lack of some 
remunerating employment. That class of women, 
whose developed brains and less developed muscles 
mark them as peculiarly fitted for the performance of 
the labors of a high civilization, stand utterly aloof 
from paid domestic service. Sooner beg, sooner 
starve, sooner marry for money, sooner hang on as 
dependants in families where they know they are not 
wanted, than accept of a quiet home, easy, healthful 
work, and certain wages, in these refined and pleasant 
modern dwellings of ours." 

" What is the reason of this ? " said Bob. 

" The reason is, that we have not yet come to the 
full development of Christian democracy. The taint 
of old aristocracies is yet pervading all parts of our 
society. AVe have not yet realized fully the true dig- 
nity of labor, and the surpassing dignity of domestic 
labor. And I must say that the valuable and coura- 
geous women who have agitated the doctrines of 
V/oman's Rights among us have not in all things seen 
their way clear in this matter." 



What will Yotc do with Her? 21 

"Don't talk to me of those creatures," said Bob, 
'' those men-women, those anomalies, neither flesh nor 
fish, with their conventions, and their cracked woman- 
voices strained in what they call public speaking, but 
which I call public squeaking ! No man reverences 
true women more than I do. I hold a real, true, 
thoroughly good woman^ whether in my parlor or my 
kitchen, as my superior. She can always teach me 
something that I need to know. She has always in 
her somewhat of the divine gift of prophecy ; but in 
order to keep it, she must remain a woman. AVhen 
she crops her hair, puts on pantaloons, and strides 
about in conventions, she is an abortion, and not a 
woman." 

" Come ! come ! " said I, " after all, speak with 
deference. We that choose to wear soft clothing and 
dwell in kings' houses must respect the Baptists, who 
wear leathern girdles, and eat locusts and wild honey. 
They are the voices crying in the wilderness, prepar- 
ing the way for a coming good. They go down on 
their knees in the mire of life to lift up and brighten 
and restore a neglected truth ; and we that have not 
the energy to share their struggle should at least re- 
frain from criticising their soiled garments and un- 
graceful action. There have been excrescences, ec- 
centricities, peculiarities, about tlip camp of these 
reformers ; but the body of them have been true and 



22 TJie CJiimncy-Corncr. 

noble women, and worthy of all the reverence due to 
such. They have already in many of our States re- 
formed the laws relating to woman's position, and 
placed her on a more just and Christian basis. It is 
through their movements that in many of our States a 
woman can hold the fruits of her own earnings, if it 
be her ill luck to have a worthless, drunken spend- 
thrift for a husband. It is owing to their exertions 
that new trades and professions are opening to wo- 
man ; and all that I have to say of them is, that in 
the suddenness of their zeal for opening new paths for 
her feet, they have not sufficiently considered the 
propriety of straightening, widening, and mending the 
one broad, good old path of domestic labor, estab- 
lished by God himself. It does appear to me, that, 
if at least a portion of their zeal could be spent in 
removing the stones out of this highway of domestic 
life, and making it pleasant and honorable, they would 
effect even more. I would not have them leave un- 
done what they are doing ; but I would, were I wor- 
thy to be considered, humbly suggest to their pro- 
phetic wisdom and enthusiasm, whether, in this new 
future of women which they wish to introduce, wo- 
men's natural, God -given employment of dofnestic 
service is not to receive a new character, and rise in a 
new form. 

" ' To love and serve ' is a motto worn with pride 



What will You do with Her? 23 

on some aristocratic family shields in England. It 
ought to be graven on the Christian shield. Servant 
is the name which Christ gives to the Christian; and 
in speaking of his kingdom as distinguished from 
earthly kingdoms, he distinctly said, that rank there 
should be conditioned, not upon desire to command, 
but on willingness to serve. 

" ' Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise 
dominion over them, and they that are great exercise 
authority upon them. But it shall not be so among 
you : but whosoever will be great among you, let him 
be your minister ; and whosoever will be chief among 
you, let him be your servant' 

" Why is it, that this name of servant, which Christ 
says is the highest in the kingdom of heaven, is so 
dishonored among us professing Christians, that good 
women will beg or starve, will suffer almost any ex- 
treme of poverty and privation, rather than accept 
home, competence, security, with this honored name ? " 

" The fault with many of our friends of the Wo- 
man's Rights order," said my wife, " is the deprecia- 
tory tone in which they have spoken of the domestic 
labors of a family as being altogether below the scope 
of the faculties of woman. ''Domestic drudgery' they 
call it, — an expression that has done more harm than 
any two v/ords that ever were put together. 

" Think of a woman's calUng clear-starching and 



24 TJic CJiinincy-Conicr. 

ironing domestic drudgery, and to better the matter 
turning to type-setting in a grimy printing-office ! Call 
the care of china and silver, the sweeping of carpets, 
the arrangement of parlors and sitting-rooms, drudg- 
ery ; and go into a factory and spend the day amid the 
whir and clatter and thunder of machinery, inhaling 
an atmosphere loaded with wool and machine-grease, 
and keeping on the feet for twelve hours, nearly con- 
tinuously! Think of its being called drudgery to 
take care of a clean, light, airy nursery, to wash and 
dress and care for two or three children, to mend 
their clothes, tell them stories, make them playthings, 
take them out walking or driving ; and rather than 
this, to wear out the whole livelong day, extending 
often deep into the night, in endless sewing, in a close 
room of a dressmaking establishment ! Is it any less 
drudgery to stand all day behind a counter, serving 
customers, than to tend a door-bell and wait on a 
table ? For my part," said my wife, *' I have often 
thought the matter over, and concluded, that, if I were 
left in straitened circumstances, as many are in a 
great city, I would seek a position as a servant in one 
of our good families." 

" I envy the family that you even think of in that 
connection," said I. " I fancy the amazement whicli 
would take possession of them as you began to de- 
velop among them." 



W/ial will Yoii do with Her? 2$ 

" I have always held," said my wife, " that family 
work, in many of its branches, can be better per- 
formed by an educated woman than an uneducated 
one. Just as an army where even the bayonets think 
is superior to one of mere brute force and mechanical 
training, so, I have heard it said, some of our distin- 
guished modern female reformers show an equal supe- 
riority in the domestic sphere, — and I do not doubt 
it. Family work was never meant to be the special 
province of untaught brains. I have sometimes 
thought I should like to show what I could do as a 
servant." 

"Well," said Bob, "to return from all this to the 
question. What's to be done with her? Are you 
going to my distressed woman ? If you are, suppose 
you take your distressed woman along, and ask her to 
try it. I can promise her a pleasant house, a quiet 
room by herself, healthful and not too hard work, a 
kind friend, and some leisure for reading, writing, or 
whatever other pursuit of her own she may choose for 
her recreation. We are always quite willing to lend 
books to any who appreciate them. Our house is sur- 
rounded by pleasant grounds, which are open to our 
servants as to ourselves. So let her come and try us. 
I am quite sure that country air, quiet security, and 
moderate exercise in a good home, will bring up her 
health ; and if she is willing to take the one or two 

2 



26 TJic CJi'ufuuy-Conicr. 

disagreeables which may come with all this, let her try 
us." 

" Well," said I, " so be it ; and would that all the 
women seeking homes and employment could thus fall 
in with women who have homes and are perishing in 
them for want of educated helpers ! " 

On this question of woman's work I have yet more 
to say, but must defer it till another time. 



II. 

WOMAN'S SPHERE. 



"^[T 7HAT do you thinl 
^ » question ? " said 



ik of this Woman's Rights 
question ? " said Bob Stephens. " From 
some of your remarks, I apprehend that you think 
tliere is something in it, I may be wrong, but I must 
confess that I have looked with disgust on the whole 
movement. No man reverences women as I do ; but 
I reverence them as women. I reverence them for 
those very things in which their sex differs from ours ; 
jjut when they come upon our ground, and begin to 
work and fight after our manner and with our weap- 
ons, I regard them as fearful anomalies, neither men 
nor women. These Woman's Rights Conventions 
appear to me to have ventilated crudities, absurdities, 
and blasphemies. To hear them talk about men, one 
would suppose that the two sexes were natural-born 
enemies, and wonders whether they ever had fathers 
and brothers. One would think, upon their showing, 
that all men were a set of ruffians, in league against 



28 The Chhnncy-Corner. 

women, — they seeming, at the same time, to forget 
how on their very platforms the most constant and 
gallant defenders of their rights are men. Wendell 
Phillips and Wentworth Higginson have put at the 
service of the cause masculine training and manly 
vehemence, and complacently accepted the wholesale 
abuse of their own sex at the hands of their warrior 
sisters. One would think, were all they say of female 
powers true, that our Joan-of-Arcs ought to have dis- 
dained to fight under male captains." 

" I think," said my wife, "that, in all this talk about 
the rights of men, and the rights of women, and the 
rights of children, the world seems to be forgetting 
what is quite as important, the duties of men and 
women and children. We all hear of our 7-ighis till 
we forget our duties ; and even theology is beginning 
to concern itself more with what man has a right to 
expect of his Creator than what the Creator has a 
right to expect of man." 

" You say the truth," said I ; " there is danger of 
just this overaction ; and yet rights must be dis- 
cussed ; because, in order to understand the duties we 
owe to any class, we must understand their rights. To 
know our duties to men, wonien, and children, we must 
know what the rights of men, women, and children 
justly are. As to the * Woman's Rights movement,' it 
is not peculiar to America, it is part of a great wave 



Woman s Sphere. . 29 

in the incoming tide of modern civilization ; the swell 
is felt no less in Europe, but it combs over and breaks 
on our American shore, because our great wide beach 
affords the best play for its waters ; and as the ocean 
waves bring with them kelp, sea-weed, mud, sand, 
gravel, and even putrefying debris, which lie unsightly 
on the shore, tind yet, on the whole, are healthful and 
refreshing, — so the Woman's Rights movement, with 
its conventions, its speech-makings, its crudities, and 
eccentricities, is nevertheless a part of a healthful and 
necessary movement of the human race towards pro- 
gress. This question of Woman and her Sphere is now, 
perhaps, the greatest of the age. We have put Slavery 
under foot, and with the downfall of Slavery the only 
obstacle to the success of our great democratic experi- 
ment is overthrown, and there seems no limit to the 
splendid possibilities which it may open before the 
human race. 

" In the reconstruction that is now coming there 
lies more than the reconstruction of States and the 
arrangement of the machinery of government. We 
need to know and feel, all of us, Ihat, from the mo- 
ment of the death of Slavery, we parted finally from 
the regime and control of all the old ideas formed 
under old oppressive systems of society, and came 
upon a new plane of life. 

" In this new life we must never forget that we are a 



30 The Chimney-Conter. 

peculiar people, that we have to walk in paths unknown 
to the Old World, — paths where its wisdom cannot 
guide us, where its precedents can be of little use to 
us, and its criticisms, in most cases, must be wholly 
irrelevant. The history of our war has shown us of 
how little service to us in any important crisis the opin- 
ions and advice of the Old World can be. We have 
been hurt at what seemed to us the want of sympathy, 
the direct antagonism, of England. We might have 
been less hurt if we had properly understood that 
Providence had placed us in a position so far ahead of 
her ideas or power of comprehension, that just judg- 
ment or sympathy was not to be expected from her. 

" As we went through our great war with no help 
but that of God, obliged to disregard the misconcep- 
tions and impertinences which the foreign press rained 
down upon us, so, if we are wise, we shall continue to 
do. Our object must now be to make the principles 
on which our government is founded permeate consist- 
ently the mass of society, and to purge out the leaven 
of aristocratic and Old World ideas. So long as there 
is an illogical working in our actual life, so long as 
there is any class denied equal rights with other classes, 
so long will there be agitation and trouble." 

"Then," said my wife, "you believe that women 
ought to vote.?" 

" If the principle on which we founded our govern- 



Woma7t's Sphere. 31 

ment is true, that taxation must not exist without 
representation, and if women hold property and are 
taxed, it follows that women should be represented 
in the State by their votes, or there is an illogical 
working of our government." 

" But, my dear, don't you think that this will have 
d bad effect on the female character ? " 

" Yes," said Bob, *' it will make women caucus- 
holders, political candidates." 

" It may make this of some women, just as of some 
men," said I. " But all men do not take any great 
interest in politics ; it is very difficult to get some of 
the best of them to do their duty in voting j and the 
same will be found true among women." 

" But, after all," said Bob, " what do you gain ? 
What will a woman's vote be but a duplicate of that of 
her husband or father, or whatever man happens to be 
her adviser ? " 

" That may be true on a variety of questions ; but 
there are subjects on which the vote of women would, 
I think, be essentially different from that of men. On 
the subjects of temperance, public morals, and educa- 
tion, I have no doubt that the introduction of the 
female vote into legislation, in States, comities, and 
cities, would produce results very different from that of 
men alone. There are thousands of women who 
would close grogshops, and stop the traffic in spirits, if 



32 The Chininey-Conier, 

they had the legislative power j and it would be well 
for society if they had. In fact, I think that a State 
can no more afford to dispense with the vote of women 
in its affairs than a family. Imagine a family where the 
female has no voice in the housekeeping I A State is 
but a larger family, and there are many of its concerns 
wtich equally with those of a private household would 
be bettered by female supervision." 

" But fancy women going to those horrible voting- 
places ! It is more than I can do myself," said Bob. 

" But you forget," said I, " that they are horrible and 
disgusting principally because women never go to 
them. All places where women are excluded tend 
downward to barbarism ; but the moment she is intro- 
duced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, 
sobriety, and order. When a man can walk up to the 
ballot-box with his wife or his sister on his arm, voting- 
places will be far more agreeable than now ; and the 
polls will not be such bear-gardens that refined men 
will be constantly tempted to omit their political duties 
there. 

" If for nothing else, I would have women vote, that 
the business of voting may not be so disagreeable and 
intolerable to men of refinement as it now is ; and I 
sincerely believe that the cause of good morals, good 
order, cleanliness, and public health would be a gaine/, 
not merely by the added feminine vote, but by the 



Woman's Sphere. 33 

added vote of a great many excellent, but too fastidi- 
ous men, who. are now kept from the polls by the dis- 
agreeables they meet there. 

" Do you suppose, that, if women had equal repre- 
sentation with men in the municipal laws of New 
York, its reputation for filth during the last year would 
have gone so far beyond that of Cologne, or any other 
city renowned for bad smells ? I trow not. I believe 
a lady-mayoress would have brought in a dispensation 
of brooms and whitewash, and made a terrible search- 
ing into dark holes and vile corners, before now. Fe- 
male New York, I have faith to believe, has yet left in 
her enough of the primary instincts of womanhood to 
give us a clean, healthy city, if female votes had any 
power to do it." 

"But," said Bob, "you forget that voting would 
bring together all the women of the lower classes." 

" Yes ; but thanks to the instincts of their sex, they 
would come in their Sunday clothes ; for where is the 
woman that has n't her finery, and will not embrace 
every chance to show it ? Biddy's parasol, and hat 
with pink ribbons, would necessitate a clean shirt in 
Pat as much as on Sunday. Voting would become a 
fete J and we should have a population at the polls as 
v/ell dressed as at church. Such is my belief" 

" I do not see," said Bob, " but you go to the full 
extent with our modern female reformers." 

2* c 



34 The Chimney-Corner. 

"There are certain neglected truths, which have 
been held up by these reformers, that are gradually 
being accepted and infused into the Hfe of modern 
society ; and their recognition will help to solidify and 
purify democratic institutions. They are, — 

" I. The right of every woman to hold independent 
property. 

" 2. The right of every woman to receive equal pay 
with man for work which she does equally well. 

" 3. The right of any woman to do any work for 
which, by her natural organization and talent, she is 
peculiarly adapted. 

"Under the first head, our energetic sisters haVe 
already, by the help of their gallant male adjutants, 
reformed the laws of several of our States, so that a 
married woman is no longer left the unprotected legal 
slave of any unprincipled, drunken spendthrift who 
may be her husband, — but, in case of the imbecility 
or improvidence of the natural head of the family, the 
wife, if she have the ability, can conduct business, 
make contracts, earn and retain money for the good of 
the household ; and I am sure no one can say that 
immense injustice and cruelty are not thereby pre- 
vented. 

"It is quite easy for women who have the good 
fortune to have just and magnanimous husbands to 
say that they feel no interest in such reforms, and that 



Wopian's Sphere. 35 

they would willingly trust their property to the man to 
whom they give themselves ; but they should remem- 
ber that laws are not made for the restraint of the 
generous and just, but of the dishonest and base. 
The law which enables a married woman to hold her 
own property does not forbid her to give it to the man 
of her heart, if she so pleases ; and it does protect 
many women who otherwise would be reduced to the 
extremest misery. I once knew an energetic milhner 
who had her shop attached four times, and a flourish- 
ing business broken up in four different cities, because 
she was tracked from city to city by a worthless 
spendthrift, who only waited till she had amassed a 
little property in a new place to swoop down upon 
and carry it off. It is to be hoped that the time is 
not distant when every State will give to woman a fair 
chance to the ownership and use of her own earnings 
and her own property. 

" Under the head of the right of every woman to do 
any work for which by natural organization and talent 
she is especially adapted, there is a word or two to be 
said. 

"The talents and tastes of the majority of women 
are naturally domestic. The family is evidently their 
sphere, because in all ways their organization fits them 
for that more than for anything else. 

" But there are occasionally women who are excep- 



36 The CJiimney-Corner. 

tions to the common law, gifted with peculiar genius 
and adaptations. With regard to such women, there 
has never seemed to be any doubt in the verdict of 
mankind, that they ought to follow their nature, and 
that their particular sphere was the one to which they 
are called. Did anybody ever think that Mrs. Sid- 
dons and Mrs. Kemble and Ristori had better have 
applied themselves sedulously to keeping house, be- 
cause they were women, and ' woman's noblest station 
is retreat t ' 

"The world has always shown a fair average of 
good sense in this matter, — from the days of the fair 
Hypatia in Alexandria, who, we are told, gave lec- 
tures on philosophy behind a curtain, lest her charms 
should distract the attention of too impressible young 
men, down to those of Anna Dickinson. Mankind 
are not, after all, quite fools, and seem in these cases 
to have a reasonable idea that exceptional talents 
have exceptional laws, and make their own code of 
proprieties. 

" Now there is no doubt that Miss Dickinson, 
though as relating to her femininity she is quite as 
pretty and modest a young woman as any to be found 
in the most sheltered circle, has yet a most excep- 
tional talent for public speaking, which draws crowds 
to hear her, and makes lecturing for her a lucrative 
profession, as well as a means of advocating just and 



Woman^s Sphere. 37 

generous sentiments, and of stimulating her own sex 
to nobler purposes ; and the same law which relates 
to Siddons and Kemble and Ristori relates also to 
her. 

" The doctrine of vocations is a good one and a safe 
one. If a woman mistakes her vocation, so much the 
worse for her ; the world does not suffer, but she 
does, and the suffering speedily puts her where she 
belongs. There is not near so much danger from 
attempts to imitate Anna Dickinson, as there is 
from the more common feminine attempts to rival the 
demi-monde of Paris in fantastic extravagance and 
luxury. 

" As to how a woman may determine whether she 
has any such vocation, there is a story quite in point. 
A good Methodist elder was listening to an ardent 
young mechanic, who thought he had a call to throw 
up his shop and go to preaching. 

" ' I feel,' said the young ardent, ' that I have a call 
to preach.' 

" * Hast thou noticed whether people seem to have 
a call to hear thee.?' said the shrewd old man. 'I 
have always noticed that a true call of the Lord may 
be known by this, ' that people have a call to hear.' " 

"Well," said Bob, "the most interesting question 
still remains : What are to be the employments of 
woman ? What ways are there for her to use her 



38 TJic CJiiinney'Cornc}'. 

talents, to earn her livelihood and support those who 
are dear to her, when Providence throws that neces- 
sity upon her? This is becoming more than ever one 
of the pressing questions of our age. The war has 
deprived so many thousands of women of their natural 
protectors, that everything must be thought of that 
may possibly open a way for their self-support." 

"Well, let us look over the field," said my wife. 
*' "What is there for woman ? " 

" In the first place," said I, " come the professions 
requiring natural genius, — authorship, painting, sculp- 
ture, with the subordinate arts of photographing, col- 
oring, and finishing ; but when all is told, these fur- 
nish employment to a veiy limited number, — almost 
as nothing to the whole. Then there is teaching, 
which is profitable in its higher branches, and per- 
haps the very pleasantest of all the callings open to 
woman ; but teaching is at present an overcrowded 
profession, the applicants everywhere outnumbering 
the places. Architecture and landscape-gardening 
are arts every way suited to the genius of woman, and 
there are enough who have the requisite mechanical 
skill and mathematical education ; and though never 
yet thought of for the sex, that I know of, I do not 
despair of seeing those who shall find in this field a 
profession at once useful and elegant. When women 
plan dwelling-houses, the vast body of tenements to 



Woman's Sphere, , 39 

be let in our cities will wear a more domestic and 
comfortable air, and will be built more with reference 
to the real wants of their inmates." 

" I have thought," said Bob, " that agencies of vari- 
ous sorts, as canvassing the country for the sale of 
books, maps, and engravings, might properly employ 
a great many women. There is a large class whose 
health suffers from confinement and sedentary occupa- 
tions, who might, I think, be both usefully and agree- 
ably employed in business of this sort, and be recruit- 
ing their health at the same time." 

" Then," said my wife, " there is the medical pro- 
fession." 

"Yes," said I. "The world is greatly obliged to 
Miss Blackwell and other noble pioneers who faced 
and overcame the obstacles to the attainment of a 
thorough medical education by females. Thanks to 
them, a new and lucrative profession is now open to 
educated women in relieving the distresses of their 
own sex ; and we may hope that in time, through 
their intervention, the care of the sick may also be- 
come the vocation of cultivated, refined, intelligent 
women, instead of being left, as heretofore, to the 
ignorant and vulgar. The experience of our late 
war has shown us what women of a high class morally 
and intellectually can do in this capacity. Why 
should not this experience inaugurate a new and sa- 



40 The Chimney-Corner. 

cred calling for refined and educated women ? Why 
should not nursing become a vocation equal in dig- 
nity and in general esteem to the medical profession, 
of which it is the right hand ? Why should our dear- 
est hopes, in the hour of their greatest peril, be com- 
mitted into the hands of Sairey Gamps, when the 
world has seen Florence Nightingales ? " 

" Yes, indeed," said my wife ; " I can testify, from 
my own experience, that the sufferings and dangers of 
the sick-bed, for the want of intelligent, educated 
nursing, have been dreadful. A prejudiced, pig- 
headed, snuff-taking old woman, narrow-minded and 
vulgar, and more confident in her own way than seven 
men that can render a reason, enters your house at 
just the hour and moment when all your dearest 
earthly hopes are brought to a crisis. She becomes 
absolute dictator over your delicate, helpless wife and 
your frail babe, — the absolute dictator of all in the 
house. If it be her sovereign will and pleasure to 
enact all sorts of physiological absurdities in the prem- 
ises, who shall say her nay ? ' She knows her busi- 
ness, she hopes ! ' And if it be her edict, as it was 
of one of her class whom I knew, that each of her 
babies shall eat four baked beans the day it is four 
days old, eat them it must ; and if the baby die in 
convulsions four days after, it is set down as the mys- 
terious will of an overruling Providence. 



Woman's Sphere. 41 

"I know and have seen women lying upon laced 
pillows under silken curtains, who have been bullied 
and dominated over in the hour of their greatest help- 
lessness by ignorant and vulgar tyrants, in a way that 
would scarce be thought possible in civilized society, 
and children that have been injured or done to death 
by the same means. A celebrated physician told me 
of a babe whose eyesight was nearly ruined by its 
nurse taking a fancy to wash its eyes with camphor, 
* to keep it from catching cold,' she said. I knew 
another infant that was poisoned by the nurse giving 
it laudanum in some of those patent nostrums which 
these ignorant creatures carry secretly in their pockets, 
to secure quiet in their little charges. I knew one 
delicate woman who never recovered from the effects 
of being left at her first confinement in the hands of 
an ill-tempered, drinking nurse, and whose feeble in- 
fant was neglected and abused by this woman in a 
way to cause lasting injury. In the first four weeks 
of infancy the constitution is peculiarly impressible ; 
and infants of a delicate organization may, if fright- 
ened and ill-treated, be the subjects of just such a 
shock to the nervous system as in mature age comes 
from the sudden stroke of a great affliction or terror. 
A bad nurse may affect nerves predisposed to weak- 
ness in a manner they never will recover from. I sol- 
emnly believe that the constitutions of more women 



42 TJic CJiimncy'-Corner. 

are broken up by bad nursing in their first confine- 
ment than by any other cause whatever. And yet 
there are at the same time hundreds and thousands of 
women wanting the means of support, whose presence 
in a sick-room would be a benediction. I do trust 
that Miss Blackwell's band of educated nurses will 
not be long in coming, and that the number of such 
may increase till they eftect a complete revolution in 
this vocation. A class of cultivated, well-trained, 
intelligent nurses would soon elevate the employment 
of attending on the sick into the noble calling it 
ought to be, and secure for it its appropriate rewards." 
" There is another opening for woman," said I, — 
"in the world of business. The system of commer- 
cial colleges now spreading over our land is a new 
and a most important development of our times. 
There that large class of young men who have either 
no time or no inclination for an extended classical 
education can learn what will fit them for that active 
material life which in our broad country needs so 
many workers. But the most pleasing feature of these 
institutions is, that the complete course is open to 
women no less than to men, and women there may 
acquire that knowledge of book-keeping and accounts, 
and of the forms and principles of business transac- 
tions, which will qualify them for some of the lucrative 
situations hitherto monopolized by the other sex. 



Woman's Sphere. 43 

And the expenses of the course of instruction are so 
arranged as to come within the scope of very mod- 
erate means. A fee of fifty dollars entitles a woman 
to the benefit of the whole course, and she has the 
privilege of attending at any hours that may suit her 
own engagements and convenience." 

" Then, again," said my wife, " there are the depart- 
ments of millinery and dressmaking, and the various 
branches of needle-work, which afford employment to 
thousands of women ; there is type-setting, by which 
many are beginning to get a living ; there are the 
manufactures of cotton, woollen, silk, and the num- 
berless useful articles which employ female hands in 
their fabrication, — all of them opening avenues by 
which, with more or less success, a subsistence can be 
gained." 

" Well, really," said Bob, " it would appear, after 
all, that there are abundance of openings for women. 
What is the cause of the outcry and distress ? How 
is it that we hear of women starving, driven to vice 
and crime by want, when so many doors of useful and 
profitable employment stand open to them ? " 

" The question would easily be solved," said my wife, 
" if you could once see the kind and class of women 
who thus suffer and starve. There may be exceptions, 
but too large a portion of them are girls and women 
who can or will do no earthly thing well, — and what 



44 The CJiimncy-Corncr. 

is worse, are not willing to take the pains to be taught 
to do anything well. I will describe to you one girl, 
and you will find in every intelligence-oflfice a hundred 
of her kind to five thoroughly trained ones. 

" Imprimis : she is rather delicate and genteel-look- 
ing, and you may know fiom the arrangement of her 
hair just what the last mode is of disposing of rats or 
waterfalls. She has a lace bonnet with roses, a silk 
mantilla, a silk dress trimmed with velvet, a white 
skirt with sixteen tucks and an embroidered edge, a 
pair of cloth gaiters, underneath which are a pair of 
stockings without feet^ the only pair in her possession. 
She has no under-linen, and sleeps at night in the 
working-clothes she wears in the day. She never 
seems to have in her outfit either comb, brush, or 
tooth-brush of her own, — neither needles, thread, 
scissors, nor pins ; her money, when she has any, 
being spent on more important articles, such as the 
lace bonnet or silk mantilla, or the rats and waterfalls 
that glorify her head. When she wishes to sew, she 
borrows what is needful of a convenient next neigh- 
bor ; and if she gets a place in a family as second 
girl, she expects to subsist in these respects by bor- 
rowing of the better-appointed servants, or helping 
herself from the family stores. 

" She expects, of course, the very highest "wages, if 
she ^condescends to live out; and by help of a trim 



Woman's Sphere. 45 

outside appearance and the many vacancies that are 
continually occurring in households, she gets places, 
where her object is to do just as little of any duty 
assigned to her as possible, to hurry through her per- 
formances, put on her fine clothes, and go a-gadding. 
She is on free and easy terms with all the men she 
meets, and ready at jests and repartee, sometimes far 
from seemly. Her time of service in any one place 
lasts indifferently from a fortnight to two or three 
months, when she takes her wages, buys her a new 
parasol in the latest style, and goes back to the intelli- 
gence-office. In the different families where she has 
lived she has been told a hundred times the pro- 
prieties of household life, how to make beds, arrange 
rooms, wash china, glass, and silver, and set tables ; 
but her habitual rule is to try in each place how small 
and how poor services will be accepted. When she 
finds less will not do, she gives more. When the mis- 
tress follows her constantly, and shows an energetic 
determination to be well served, she shows that she 
can serve well ; but the moment such attention relaxes, 
she slides back again. She is as destructive to a 
house as a fire ; the very spirit of wastefulness is in 
her ; she cracks the china, dents the silver, stops the 
water-pipes with rubbish, and after she is gone, there 
is generally a sum equal to half her wages to be ex- 
pended in repairing the effects of her carelessness. 



46 The Chimney-Comer. 

And yet there is one thing to be said for her : she is 
quite as careful of her employer's things as of her 
own. The full amount of her mischiefs often does 
not appear at once, as she is glib of tongue, adroit in 
apologies, and lies with as much alertness and as little 
thought of conscience as a blackbird chatters. It is 
difficult for people who have been trained from child- 
hood in the school of verities, — who have been 
lectured for even the shadow of a prevarication, and 
shut up in disgrace for a lie, till truth becomes a habit 
of their souls, — it is very difficult for people so edu- 
cated to understand how to get on with those who 
never speak the truth except by mere accident, who 
assert any and everything that comes into their heads 
with all the assurance and all the energy of perfect 
verity. 

" What becomes of this girl ? She finds means, by 
begging, borrowing, living out, to keep herself ex- 
tremely trim and airy for a certain length of time, till 
the rats and waterfalls, the lace hat and parasol, and 
the glib tongue, have done their work in making a 
fool of some honest young mechanic who earns three 
dollars a day. She marries him with no higher object 
than to have somebody to earn money for her to 
spend. And what comes of such marriages ? 

" That is one ending of her career ; the other is on 
the street, in haunts of vice, in prison, in drunkenness, 
and death. 



Woman s Sphere. 47 

" Whence come these girls ? They are as numer- 
ous as yellow butterflies in autumn ; they flutter up to 
cities from the country ; they grow up from mothers 
who ran the same sort of career before them ; and the 
reason why in the end they fall out of all reputable 
employment and starve on poor wages is, that they 
become physically, mentally, and morally incapable of 
rendering any service which society will think worth 
paying for." 

" I remember," said I, " that the head of the most 
celebrated dress-making establishment in New York, 
in reply to the appeals of the needle-women of the 
city for sympathy and wages, came out with published 
statements to this effect : that the difficulty lay not in 
unwillingness of employers to pay what work was 
worth, but in finding any work worth paying for ; that 
she had many applicants, but among them few who 
could be of real use to her ; that she, in common with 
everybody in this country who has any kind of serious 
responsibilities to carry, was continually embarrassed 
for want of skilled work-people, who could take and 
go on with the labor of her various departments with- 
out her constant supervision ; that out of a hundred 
girls, there would not be more than five to whom she 
could give a dress to be made and dismiss it from her 
mind as something certain to be properly done. 

" Let people individually look around their own lit- 



48 TJic CJi'uniuy-Conicr. 

tie sphere, and ask themselves if they know any wo- 
man really excelling in any valuable calling or accom- 
plishment who is suffering for want of work. All of 
us know seamstresses, dress-makers, nurses, and laun- 
dresses, who have made themselves such a reputation, 
and are so beset and overcrowded with work, that the 
whole neighborhood is constantly on its knees to them 
with uplifted hands. The fine seamstress, who can 
cut and make trousseaus and layettes in elegant per- 
fection, is always engaged six months in advance ; the 
pet dress-maker of a neighborhood must be engaged 
in May for September, and in September for May ; a 
laundress who sends your clothes home in nice order 
always has all the work that she can do. Good work 
in any department is the rarest possible thing in our 
American life ; and it is a fact that the great majority 
of workers, both in the family and out, do only toler- 
ably well, — not so badly that it actually cannot be 
borne, yet not so well as to be a source of real, 
thorough satisfaction. The exceptional worker in 
every neighborhood, who does things really 7tv//, can 
always set her own price, and is always having more 
offering than she can possibly do. 

" The trouble, then, in finding employment for wo- 
men lies deeper than the purses or consciences of the 
employers ; it lies in the want of education in women ; 
the want of education^ I say, — meaning by education 



IVoinaiis Sphere. 49 

that which fits a woman for practical and profitable 
employment in life, and not mere common school 
learning." 

" Yes," said my wife ; " for it is a fact that the most 
troublesome and hopeless persons to provide for are 
often those who have a good medium education, but 
no feminine habits, no industry, no practical calcula- 
tion, no muscular strength, and no knowledge of any 
one of woman's peculiar duties. In the earlier days of 
New England, women, as a class, had far fewer oppor- 
tunities for acquiring learning, yet were far better 
educated, physically and morally, than now. The 
high school did not exist ; at the common school they 
learned reading, writing, and arithmetic, and practised 
spelling ; while at home they did the work of the 
household. They were cheerful, bright, active, ever 
on the alert, able to do anything, from the harnessing 
and driving of a horse to the finest embroidery. The 
daughters of New England in those days looked the 
world in the face without a fear. They shunned no 
labor j they were afraid of none ; and they could al- 
ways find their way to a living." 

" But although less instructed in school learning," 
said I, "they showed no deficiency in intellectual 
acumen. I see no such women, nowadays, as some 
I remember of that olden time, — women whose 
strong minds and ever active industry carried on 
3 D 



50 TJie Chiiwiey-Corncr. 

reading and study side by side with household 
toils. 

" I remember a young lady friend of mine, attend- 
ing a celebrated boarding-school, boarded in the fam- 
ily of a woman who had never been to school longer 
than was necessary to learn to read and write, yet 
who was a perfect cyclopedia of general information. 
The young scholar used to take her Chemistiy and 
Natural Philosophy into the»kitchen, where her friend 
was busy with her household work, and read her les- 
sons to her, that she might have the benefit of her 
explanations ; and so, while the good lady scoured 
her andirons or kneaded her bread, she lectured to 
Tier protegee on mysteries of science far beyond the 
limits of the text-book. Many of the graduates of 
our modern high schools would find it hard to shine 
in conversation on the subjects they had studied, in 
the searching presence of some of these vigorous 
matrons of the olden time, whose only school had 
been the leisure hours gained by energy and method 
from their family cares." 

" And in those days," said my wife, " there lived in 
our families a class of American domestics, women of 
good sense and good powers of reflection, who applied 
this sense and power of reflection to household mat- 
ters. In the early part of my married life, I myself 
had American ' help ' ; and they were not only excel- 



Womajis Sphere. 51 

lent servants, but trusty and invaluable friends. But 
now, all this class of applicants for domestic service 
have disappeared, I scarce know why or how. All I 
know is, there is no more a Betsey or a Lois, such as 
used to take domestic cares off my shoulders so com- 
pletely." 

" Good heavens ! where are they ? " cried Bob. 
" Where do they hide ? I would search through the 
world after such a prodigy ! " 

" The fact is," said I, " there has been a slow and 
gradual reaction against household labor in America. 
Mothers began to feel that it was a sort of curse, to be 
spared, if possible, to their daughters ; women began 
to feel that they were fortunate in proportion as they 
were able to be entirely clear of family responsibilities. 
Then Irish labor began to come in, simultaneously 
with a great advance in female education. 

"For a long while nothing was talked of, written 
of, thought of, in teachers' meetings, conventions, 
and assemblies, but the neglected state of female 
education ; and the whole circle of the arts and sci- 
ences was suddenly introduced into our free-school 
system, from which needle-work as gradually and 
quietly was suffered to drop out. The girl who at- 
tended the primary and high school had so much 
study imposed on her that she had no time for sewing 
or housework ; and the delighted mother was only 



52 The Chimtiey- Corner. 

too happy to darn her stockings and do the house- 
work alone, that her daughter might rise to a higher 
plane than she herself had attained to. The daugh- 
ter, thus educated, had, on coming to womanhood, no 
solidity of muscle, no manual dexterity, no practice or 
experience in domestic life ; and if she were to seek a 
livelihood, there remained only teaching, or some 
feminine trade, or the factory." 

" These factories," said my wife, " have been the 
ruin of hundreds and hundreds of our once healthy 
farmers' daughters and others from the country. 
They go there young and unprotected ; they live there 
in great boarding-houses, and associate with a pro- 
miscuous crowd, without even such restraints of mater- 
nal supervision as they would have in great boarding- 
schools j their bodies are enfeebled by labor often 
necessarily carried on in a foul and heated atmos- 
phere ; and at the hours when off duty, they are ex- 
posed to all the dangers of unwatched intimacy with 
the other sex. 

" Moreover, the factory-girl learns and practises but 
one thing, — some one mechanical movement, which 
gives no scope for invention, ingenuity, or any other 
of the powers called into play by domestic labor ; so 
that she is in reality unfitted in every way for family 
duties. 

" Many times it has been my lot to try, in my fam- 



Woman s Sphere. 53 

ily service, girls who have left factories ; and I have 
found them wholly useless for any of the things which 
a woman ought to be good for. They knew nothing 
of a house, or what ought to be done in it ; they had 
imbibed a thorough contempt of household labor, and 
looked upon it but as a dernier res sort ; and it was only 
the very lightest of its tasks that they could even be- 
gin to think of. I remember I tried to persuade one 
of these girls, the pretty daughter of a fisherman, to 
take some lessons in washing and ironing. She was 
at that time engaged to be married to a young me- 
chanic, who earned something like two or three dollars 
a day. 

" ' My child,' said I, * you will need to understand 
all kinds of iiousework, if you are going to be mar- 
ried.' 

" She tossed her little head, — 

" ' Indeed, she was n't going to trouble herself about 
that' 

" ' But who will get up your husband's shirts ? ' 

" ' O, he must put them out. I 'm not going to be 
married to make a slave of myself ! ' 

" Another young factor}'-girl, who came for table 
and parlor work, was so full of airs and fine notions, 
that it seemed as difficult to treat with her as with a 
princess. She could not sweep, because it blistered 
her hands, which, in fact, were long and delicate ; she 



54 ^>^^^ CJdmney-Cojiier. 

could not think of putting them into hot dish-water, 
and for that reason preferred washing the dishes in 
cold water ; she required a full hour in the morning 
to make her toilet ; she was laced so tightly that she 
could not stoop without vertigo, and her hoops were 
of dimensions which seemed to render it impossible 
for her to wait upon table ; she was quite exhausted 
with the effort of ironing the table-napkins and cham- 
ber-towels ; — yet she could not think of ' living out' 
under two dollars a week. 

" Both these girls had had a good free-school educa- 
tion, and could read any amount of novels, write a 
tolerable letter, but had not learned anything with 
sufficient accuracy to fit them for teachers. They 
were pretty, and their destiny was to marry and lie a 
dead weight on the hands of some honest man, and 
to increase, in their children, the number of incapa- 
bles." 

" Well," said Bob, " what would you have ? What 
is to be done?" 

" In the first place," said I, " I would have it felt 
by those who are seeking to elevate woman, that the 
work is to be done, not so much by creating for her 
new spheres of action as by elevating her conceptions 
of that domestic vocation to which God and Nature 
have assigned her. It is all very well to open to her 
avenues of profit and advancement in the great outer 



Woma?is Sphere. 55 

world ; but, after all, to make and keep a home is, and 
ever must be, a woman's first glory, her highest aim. 
No work of art can compare with a perfect home ; 
the training and guiding of a family must be recog- 
nized as the highest work a woman can perform ; and 
female education ought to be conducted with special 
reference to this. 

" Men are irai?ied to be lawyers, to be physicians, 
to be mechanics, by long and self-denying study and 
practice. A man cannot even make shoes merely by 
going to the high school, and learning reading, writing, 
and mathematics ; he cannot be a book-keeper or a 
printer simply from general education. 

" Now women have a sphere and profession of 
their own, — a profession for which they are fitted by 
physical organization, by their own instincts, and to 
which they are directed by the pointing and manifest 
finger of God, — and that sphere \?> family life. 

"Duties to the State and to public life they may 
have ; but the public duties of women must bear to 
their family ones the same relation that the family 
duties of men bear to their public ones. 

" The defect in the late efforts to push on female 
education is, that it has been for her merely general, 
and that it has left out and excluded all that is 
professional ; and she undertakes the essential duties 
of womanhood, when they do devolve on her, without 
any adequate preparation." 



56 TJie Chijnncy-Conicr. 

" But is it possible for a girl to learn at school the 
things which fit her for family life ? " said Bob. 

"Why not?" I replied. "Once it was thought im- 
possible in schools to teach girls geometry, or algebra, 
or the higher mathematics ; it was thought impossible 
to put them through collegiate courses ; but it has 
been done, and we see it. Women study treatises on 
political economy in schools ; and why should not the 
study of domestic economy form a part of every 
school course ? A young girl will stand up at the 
blackboard, and draw and explain the compound 
blowpipe, and describe all the process of making 
oxygen and hydrogen. Why should she not draw and 
explain a refrigerator as well as an air-pump ? Both 
are to be explained on philosophical principles. 
When a school-girl, in her Chemistry, studies the 
reciprocal action of acids and alkalies, what is there 
to hinder the teaching her its api)lication to the vari- 
ous processes of cooking wlicre acids and alkalies are 
employed? Why should she not be led to see how 
effervescence and fermentation can be made to per- 
form their office in the preparation of light and di- 
gestible bread ? Why should she not be taught the 
chemical substances by which food is often adulter- 
ated, and the tests by which such adulterations are 
detected ? Why should she not understand the 
processes of confectionery, and know how to guard 



Womaiis Sphere. 57 

against the deleterious or poisonous elements that are 
introduced into children's sugar-plums and candies? 
Why, when she learns the doctrine of niordants, the 
substances by which different colors are set, should she 
not learn it with some practical view to future life, so 
that slie may know how to set the color of a fading 
calico or restore the color of a spotted one ? Why, in 
short, when a girl has labored through a profound 
chemical work, and listened to courses of chemical 
lectures, should she come to domestic life, which 
presents a constant series of chemical experiments and 
changes, and go blindly along as without chart or 
compass, unable to tell what will take out a stain, or 
what will brighten a i^etal, what are common poisons 
and what their antidotes, and not knowing enough of 
the laws of caloric to understand how to warm a 
house, or of the laws of atmosphere to know how to 
ventilate one ? Why should the preparation of food, 
that subtile art on which life, health, cheerfulness, 
good temper, and good looks so largely depend, for- 
ever be left in the hands of the illiterate and vulgar ? 

" A benevolent gentleman has lately left a large 
fortune for the founding of a university for women ; and 
the object is stated to be to give women who have 
already acquired a general education the means of 
acquiring a professional one, to fit themselves for some 
employment by which they may gain a livelihood. 
3* 



58 TJic Chiuuicy-Conicr. 

"In this institution the women are to be instructed 
in l)Ook-keei)ing, stenograi)hy, telegraphing, photo- 
grapliing, chawing, niodelHng, and various other arts ; 
but so far as I remember, there is no proposal to teach 
domestic economy as at least one of woman's pro- 
fessions. 

"Why should tliere not be a ^irofessor of domestic 
economy in every large female school ? Why should 
not this professor give lectures, first on house-plan- 
ning and building, illustrated by ap[)ro})riate appara- 
tus ? A\'hy sliould not the jnipils have presented to 
their inspection models of houses planned with 
reference to economy, to ease of domestic service, to 
warmth, to ventilation, and to architectural appear- 
ance ? Why should not tlie professor go on to lecture 
further on house-fixtures, with models of the best 
mangles, washing-machines, clothes-wringers, ranges, 
furnaces, and cooking-stoves, together with drawings 
and apparatus illustrative of domestic hytlraulics, 
showing the best contrivances for bathing-rooms and 
the obvious principles of plumbing, so that the pupils 
may have some idea how to work the machinery of a 
convcJiient house when they have it, and to have such 
conveniences introduced when wanting? If it is 
thought worth while to provide, at great ■ expense, 
apparatus for teaching the revolutions of Saturn's 
moons and tlie precession of the equinoxes, why 



Woma7is Sphere. 59 

should there not be some also to teach what it may 
greatly concern a woman's earthly happiness to 
know ? 

" Wliy shoulfl not the professor lecture on hoine- 
chernistry, devoting his first lecture to bread making ? 
and why might not a batch of bread be made and 
bakccl and exhibiterl to the class, together with speci- 
mens of morbid anatomy in the bread line, — the sour 
cotton bread of the baker, — the rough, big-holed 
bread, — the heavy, fossil bread, — the bitter bread 
of too much yeast, — and the causes of their defects 
jKjiiited out? And sr; with regard to the various arti- 
cles of food, — wliy might not chemical lectures be 
given on all of them, one after another? In short, it 
would be easy to trace out a course of lectures on 
common things to occuj)y a whole year, and for which 
the pupils, whenever they come to have homes of 
their own, will thank the lecturer to the last day of 
their life. 

"Then there is no im|;ossibih't,y in teaching needle- 
work, the cutting and fitting of dresses, in female 
schools. The thing is done very perfectly in J^^nglish 
.schools for the working classes. A girl trained at one 
of these schools came into a family f once knew. 
She brought with lier a sewing-book, in winch the 
process of making various articles was exhibited in 
miniature. The several parts of a shirt were first 



6o The CJii)}incy-Conicr. 

shown, each perfectly made, and fastened to a leaf of 
the book by itself, and then the successive steps of 
uniting the parts, till finally appeared a miniature 
model of the whole. I'he sewing was done with red 
thread, so that every stitch might show, and any 
imperfection be at once remedied. The same process 
was pursued \vith regard to other garments, and a good 
general idea of cutting and fitting them was thus 
given to an entire class of girls. 

'' In the same manner the care and nursing of 
young children and the tending of the sick might be 
made the subject of lectures. Every woman ought to 
have some general principles to guide her with regard 
to what is to be done in case of the various accidents 
that may befall either children or grown people, and 
of their lesser illnesses, and ought to know how to pre- 
pare comforts and nourishment for the sick. Haw- 
thorne's satirical remarks upon the contrast between 
the elegant Zenobia's conversation and the smoky 
porridge she made for him when he was an invalid 
might apply to the volunteer cookery of many charm- 
ing women.'' 

" I think," said Bob, " that your Professor of Do- 
mestic Economy would find enough to occupy his 
pupils." 

"In fiict," said I, "were domestic economy properly 
honored and properly taught, in the manner described, 



Womaiis Sphere. 6 1 

it would open a sphere of employment to so many 
women in the home life, that we should not be obliged 
to send our women out to California or the Pacific to 
put an end to an anxious and aimless life. 

" When domestic work is sufficiently honored to be 
taught as an art and science in our boarding-schools 
and high schools, then possibly it may acquire also 
dignity in the eyes of our working classes, and young 
girls who have to earn their own living may no longer 
feel degraded in engaging in domestic service. The 
place of a domestic in a family may become as respect- 
able in their eyes as a place in a factory, in a print- 
ing-office, in a dressmaking or millinery establish- 
ment, or behind the counter of a shop. 

" In America there is no class which will confess 
itself the lower class, and a thing recommended solely 
for the benefit of any such class finds no one to re- 
ceive it. 

" If the intelligent and cultivated look down on 
household work with disdain ; if they consider it as 
degrading, a thing to be shunned by every possible 
device ; they may depend upon it that the influence of 
such contempt of woman's noble duties will flow 
downward, producing a like contempt in every class 
in life. 

" Our sovereign princesses learn the doctrine of 
equality very quickly, and are not going to sacrifice 



62 The Chimmy-Cormr, 

thomsohos to wluit is not oonsidoiwl .;V bon A'v by the 
upper i.'Lis>os ; aiul tbo i;iil \\\\\\ \\\c l.iccvl liat and 
parasol, ^vilhout unJor clothes, who docs her host to 
* shirk' luT duties as housemaid, and is looking for 
marriage as an escape from work, is a fair copy of her 
mistress, who marricvl tor nuich the same reason, who 
l\ates housekeeping, and would rather board or \\o 
anything else than have the care of a tamily ; the 
one is about as respectable as the other. 

*'\\'hen housekeeping becon\es an entluisiasi\i. and 
its study and practice a tashion, then we shall have in 
America that class of persons to rely on for help in 
household labors who are now going to lactories, to 
printing-otTices, to every kind of toil, forgetful of the 
best lite and sphere of woman." 



III. 

A FAMILY-TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION. 

OUR Chirnney-Corner, of which we have spoken 
somewhat, has, besides the wonted domestic 
circle, its habitues who have a frequent seat there. 
Among these, none is more welcome than Theophilus 
Thoro. 

Friend Theophilus was horn on the shady side of 
Nature, and endowed by his patron saint with every 
grace and gift which can make a human creature 
worthy and available, except the gift of seeing the 
bright side of things. His bead-roll of Christian 
virtues includes all the graces of the spirit except 
hope ; and so, if one wants to know exactly the flaw, 
the defect, the doubtful side, and to take into ac- 
count all the untoward possibilities of any person, 
place, or thing, he had best apply to friend The- 
ophilus. He can tell you just where and how the 
best-laid scheme is likely to fail, just the screw that 
will fall loose in the smoothest- working machinery, 



64 TJie CJiinincy-Corncr. 

just the flaw in the most perfect character, just the 
defect in the best- written book, just the variety of 
thorn that must accompany each particular species of 
rose. 

Yet Theophilus is without guile or malice. His 
want of faith in human nature is not bitter and censo- 
rious, but melting and , pitiful. " We are all poor 
trash, miserable dogs together," he seems to say, as 
he looks out on the world and its ways. There is not 
much to be expected of or for any of us ; but let us 
love one another, and be patient. 

Accordingly, Theophilus is one of the most inces- 
sant workers for human good, and perseveringly busy 
in every scheme of benevolent enterprise, in all which 
he labors with melancholy steadiness without hope. 
In religion he has the soul of a martyr, — nothing 
would suit him better than to be burned alive for his 
faith ; but his belief in the success of Christianity is 
about on a par with that of the melancholy disciple 
of old, who, when Christ would go to Judaea, could 
only say, " Let us also go, that we may die with him." 
Theophilus is always ready to die for the truth and 
the right, for which he never sees anything but defeat 
and destruction ahead. 

During the late war, Theophilus has been a despair- 
ing patriot, dying daily, and giving all up for lost v.\ 
every reverse from Bull Run to Fredericksburg. Tlie 



A Family-Talk on Reconstruction. 65 

surrender of Richmond and the capitulation of Lee 
shortened his visage somewhat; but the murder of 
the President soon brought it back to its old length. 
It is true, that, while Lincoln lived, he was in a per- 
petual state of dissent from all his measures. He 
had broken his heart for years over the miseries of the 
slaves, but he shuddered at the Emancipation Procla- 
mation j a whirlwind of anarchy was about to sweep 
over the country, in which the black and the white 
would dash against each other, and be shivered like 
potters' vessels. He was in despair at the accession 
of Johnson, — believing the worst of the unfavorable 
reports that clouded his reputation. Nevertheless, he 
was among the first of loyal citizens to rally to the 
support of the new administration, because, though he 
had no hope in that, he could see nothing better. 

Yo-u must not infer from all this that friend Theoph- 
ilus is a social wet blanket, a goblin shadow at the 
domestic hearth. By no means. Nature has gifted 
him with that vein of humor and that impulse to 
friendly joviality which are frequent developments in 
sad-natured men, and often deceive superficial ob- 
servers as to their real character. He who laughs 
well and makes you laugh is often called a man of 
clieerful disposition ; yet in many cases nothing can 
be further from it than precisely this kind of person. 

Theophilus frequents our chimney-corner, perhaps 



66 TJic CJi'ufiiicy-Conicr. 

because Mrs. Crowficld and myself are, so to speak, 
children of the light and the day. ISIy wife has pre- 
cisely the opposite talent to that of our friend. She 
can discover the good point, the sound spot^ where 
others see only defect and corruption. I myself am 
somewhat sanguine, and prone rather to expect good 
than evil, and with a vast stock of faith in the excel- 
lent things that may turn up in the future. TJie Mil- 
lennium is one of the prime articles of my creed ; 
and all the ups and downs of society I regard only as 
so many jolts on a very rough road that is taking the 
world on, through many upsets and disasters, to that 
final consummation. 

Theophilus holds the same belief, theoretically ; 
but it is apt to sink so fiir out of sight in the mire of 
present disaster as to be of very little comfort to 
him. 

" Yes," he said, " we are going to ruin, in my view, 
about as f^ist as we can go. Miss Jennie, I will 
trouble you for another small lump of sugar in my 
tea." 

" You have been saying that, about our going to 
ruin, every time you have taken tea here for four years 
past," said Jennie ; " but I always noticed that your 
fears never spoiled your relish either for tea or mufhns. 
People talk about being on the brink of a volcano, 
and the country going to destruction, and all that. 



A Family-Talk on Reconstruction. 67 

just as they put pepper on their potatoes; it is an 
agreeable stimulant in conversation, — that's all." 

" For my part," said my wife, " I can speak in 
another vein. When had we ever in all our history so 
bright prospects, so much to be thankful for ? Slavery 
is abolished ; the last stain of disgrace is wiped from 
our national honor. We stand now before the world 
self-consistent with our principles. We have come 
out of one of the severest struggles that ever tried a 
nation, purer and stronger in morals and religion, as 
well as more prosperous in material things." 

" My dear madam, excuse me," said Theophilus ; 
" but I cannot help being reminded of what an Eng- 
lish reviewer once said, — that a lady's facts have as 
much poetry in them as Tom Moore's lyrics. Of 
course poetry is always agreeable, even though of no 
statistical value." 

" I see no poetry in my facts," said Mrs. Crowfield. 
" Is not slavery forever abolished, by the confession 
of its best friends, — even of those who declare its 
abolition a misfortune, and themselves ruined in 
consequence ? " 

" I confess, my dear madam, that we have suc- 
ceeded as we human creatures commonly do, in sup- 
posing that we have destroyed an evil, when we have 
only changed its name. We have contrived to with- 
draw from the slave just that fiction of property 



6S The Chimney-Comer. 

relation which made it for the interest of some one to 
care for him a Httle, however imperfectly ; and having 
destroyed that, we turn him out defenceless to shift 
for himself in a community every member of which is 
imbittered against him. The whole South resounds 
with the outcries of slaves suffering the vindictive 
wrath of former masters ; laws are being passed hunt- 
ing them out of this State and out of that ; the 
animosity of race — at all times the most bitter and 
unreasonable of animosities — is being aroused all 
over the land. And the Free States take the lead in 
injustice to them. Witness a late vote of Connecti- 
cut on the suffrage question. The efforts of govern- 
ment to protect the rights of these poor defenceless 
creatures are about as energetic as such efforts always 
have been and always will be while human nature 
remains what it is. For a while the obvious rights of 
the weaker party will be confessed, with some show 
of consideration, in public speeches ; they will be 
paraded by philanthropic sentimentalists, to give 
point to their eloquence ; they will be here and there 
sustained in governmental measures, when there is no 
strong temptation to the contrary, and nothing better 
to be done ; but the moment that political combina- 
tions begin to be formed, all the rights and interests 
of this helpless people will be bandied about as "so 
many make-weights in the political scale. Any 



A Family-Talk on Reconstruction. 69 

troublesome lion will have a negro thrown to him to 
keep him quiet. All their hopes will be dashed to the 
ground by the imperious Southern white, no longer 
feeling for them even the interest of a master, and 
regarding them with a mixture of hatred and loathing 
as the cause of all his reverses. Then if, driven to 
despair, they seek to defend themselves by force, they 
will be crushed by the power of the government, 
and ground to powder, as the weak have always been 
under the heel of the strong. 

" So much for our abolition of slavery. As to our 
material prosperity, it consists of an inflated paper 
currency, an immense debt, a giddy, foolhardy spirit 
of speculation and stock-gambling, and a perfect furor 
of extravagance, which is driving everybody to live 
beyond his means, and casting contempt on the re- 
publican virtues of simplicity and economy. 

"As to advancement in morals, there never was 
so much intemperance in our people before, and the 
papers are full of accounts of frauds, defalcations, 
forgeries, robberies, assassinations, and arsons. 
Against this tide of corruption the various organized 
denominations of religion do nothing effectual. They 
are an army shut up within their own intrenchments, 
holding their own with difiiculty, and in no situation 
to turn back the furious assaults of the enemy." 

" In short," said Jennie, " according to your show- 



70 TJic CJiijJUicy-Conui: 

ing, the whole country is going to destruction. Now, 
if things really are so bad, if you really believe all 
you have been saying, you ought not to be sitting 
drinking your tea as you are now, or to have spent the 
afternoon playing croquet with us girls ; you ought to 
gird yourself with sackcloth, and go up and down the 
land, raising the alarm, and saying, ' Yet forty days 
and Nineveh shall be overthrown.' " 

''Well," said Theophilus, while a covert smile 
played about his lips, " you know the saying, ' Let us 
eat and drink, for to-morrow,' etc. Things are not yet 
gone to destruction, only going, — and why not have a 
good time on deck before the ship goes to pieces ? 
Your chimney-corner is a tranquil island in the ocean 
of trouble, and your muffins are absolutely perfect. 
I '11 take another, if you '11 please to pass them." 

" I 've a great mind not to pass them," said Jennie. 
" Are you in earnest in what you are saying ? or are 
you only saying it for sensation ? How can people 
believe such things and be comfortable ? /could not. 
If I believed all you have been saying I could not 
sleep nights, — I should be perfectly miserable ; and 
you cannot really believe all this, or you would be." 

" My dear child," said Mrs. Crowfield, " our friend's 
picture is the truth painted with all its shadows and 
none of its lights. All the dangers he speaks of are 
real and great, but he omits the counterbalancing 



A Family-Talk on Reconstntction. 71 

good. Let me speak now. There never has been a 
time in our history when so many honest and just men 
held power in our land as now, — never a government 
before in which the public councils recognized with 
more respect the just and the right. There never was 
an instance of a powerful government showing more 
tenderness in the protection of a weak and defenceless 
race than ours has shown in the care of the freedmen 
hitherto. There never was a case in which the people 
of a country were more willing to give money and 
time and disinterested labor to raise and educate 
those who have thus been thrown on their care. Con- 
sidering that we have had a great, harassing, and 
expensive war on our hands, I think the amount done 
by government and individuals for the freedmen 
unequalled in the history of nations ; and I do not 
know why it should be predicted from this past fact, 
that, in the future, both government and people are 
about to throw them to the lions, as Mr. Theophilus 
supposes. Let us wait, at least, and see. So long as 
government maintains a freedmen's bureau, adminis- 
tered by men of such high moral character, we must 
think, at all events, that there are strong indications 
in the right direction. Just think of the immense 
advance of public opinion within four years, and of 
the grand successive steps of this advance, — Emanci- 
pation in the District of Columbia, the Repeal of the 



72 TJie Chimncy-Conicr. 

Fugitive Slave Law, the General Emancipation Act, 
the Amendment of the Constitution. All these do 
not look as if the black were about to be ground to 
powder beneath the heel of the white. If the negroes 
are oppressed in the South, they can emigrate j no 
laws hold them ; active, industrious laborers will soon 
find openings in any part of the Union." 

" No," said Theophilus, " there will be black laws 
like those of Illinois and Tennessee, there will be 
turbulent uprisings of the Irish, excited by political 
demagogues, that will bar them out of Northern 
States. Besides, as a class, they will be idle and 
worthless. It will not be their fault, but it will be the 
result of their slave education. All their past obser- 
vation of their masters has taught them that liberty 
means licensed laziness, that work means degradation, 
— and therefore they will loathe work, and cherish 
laziness as the sign of liberty. ' Am not I free ? 
Have I not as good a right to do nothing as you ? ' 
will be the cry. 

" Already the lazy whites, who never lifted a hand 
in any useful employment, begin to raise the cry that 
* niggers won't work ' ; and I suspect the cry may not 
be without reason. Industrious citizens can never be 
made in a community where the higher class think 
useful labor a disgrace. The whites will oppose the 
negro in every effort to rise ; they will debar him of 



A Family-Talk on Reconstruction. 73 

every civil and social right ; they will set him the 
worst possible example, as they have been doing for 
hundreds of years ; and then they will hound and hiss 
at him for being what they made him. This is the 
old track of the world, — the good, broad, reputable 
road on which all aristocracies and privileged classes 
have been always travelling ; and it 's not Hkely that 
we shall have much of a secession from it. The Mil- 
lennium is n't so near us as that, by a great deal." 

" It 's all very well arguing from human selfishness 
and human sin in that way," said I ; " but you can't 
take up a newspaper that does n't contain abundant 
facts to the contrary. Here, now," — and I turned to 
the Tribune, — " is one item that fell under my eye 
accidentally, as you were speaking : — 

" ' The Superintendent of Freedmen's Affairs in 
Louisiana, in making up his last Annual Report, says 
he has 1,952 blacks settled temporarily on 9,650 
acres of land, who last year raised crops to the value 
of % 175,000, and that he had but few worthless blacks 
under his care ; and that, as a class, the blacks have 
fewer vagrants than can be found among any other 
class of persons.' 

''Such testimonies gem the newspapers like stars." 

" Newspapers of your way of thinking, very likely," 
said Theophilus ; " but if it comes to statistics, J. can 
bring counter-statements, numerous and dire, from 
4 



74 ^/^^ CJiimney-Corner. 

scores of Southern papers, of vagrancy, laziness, im- 
providence, and wretchedness." 

" Probably both are true," said I, " according to the 
greater or less care which has been taken of the blacks 
in different regions. Left to themselves, they tend 
downward, pressed down by the whole weight of semi- 
barbarous white society ; but when the free North 
protects and guides, the results are as you see." 

" And do you think the free North has salt enough 
in it to save this whole Southern mass from corrup- 
tion ? I wish I could think so ; but all I can see in 
the free North at present is a raging, tearing, head- 
long chase after money. Now money is of significance 
only as it gives people the power of expressing their 
ideal of life. And what does this ideal prove to be 
among us? Is it not to ape all the splendors and 
vices of old aristocratic society ? Is it not to be able 
to live in idleness, without useful employment, a life 
of glitter and flutter and show ? What do our New 
York dames of fashion seek after? To avoid family 
care, to find servants at any price who will relieve 
them of home responsibilities, and take charge of 
their houses and children while they shine at ball and 
opera, and drive in the park. And the servants who 
learn of these mistresses, — what do they seek after ? 
They seek also to get rid of care, to live as nearly as 
possible without work, to dress and shine in their 



• A Family -Talk on Reconstruction. 75 

secondary sphere, as the mistresses do in the primaiy 
one. High wages with Httle work and plenty of com- 
pany express Biddy's ideal of life, which is a little 
more respectable than that of her mistress, who wants 
high wages with no work. The house and the chil- 
dren are not Biddy's ; and why should she care more 
for their well-being than the mistress and the mother 1 
"Hence come wranglings and meanings. Biddy 
uses a chest of tea in three months, and the amount 
of the butcher's bill is fabulous ; Jane gives the baby 
laudanum to quiet it, while she slips out to her par- 
ties ; and the upper classes are shocked at the demor- 
alized state of the Irish, their utter want of faithful- 
ness and moral principle ! How dreadful that there 
are no people who enjoy the self-denials and the cares 
which they dislike, that there are no people who re- 
joice in carrying that burden of duties which they do 
not wish to touch- with one of their fingers ! The 
outcry about the badness of servants means just this : 
that everybody is tired of self-helpfulness, — the ser- 
vants as thoroughly as the masters and mistresses. 
All want the cream of life, without even the trouble 
of skimming; and the great fight now is, who shall 
drink the skim-milk, which nobody wants. Work, — 
honorable toil, — manly, womanly endeavor, — is just 
what nobody likes ; and this is as much a fact in the 
free North as in the slave South. 



y6 TJic CJiii)uuy-Conur. 

" What are all the young girls looking for in mar- 
riage ? Some man with money enough to save them 
from taking any care or having any trouble in domes- 
tic life, enabling them, like the lilies of the field, to 
rival Solomon in all his glory, while they toil not, 
neither do they spin ; and ^Yhen they find that even 
money cannot purchase iVeedom from care in family 
life, because their servants are exactly of the same 
mind with themselves, and hate to do their duties as 
cordially as they themselves do, then are they in 
anguish of spirit, and wish for slavery, or aristocracy, 
or anything that would give them power over the 
lower classes." 

" But surely, Mr. Theophilus," said Jennie, " there 
is no sin in disliking trouble, and wanting to live easily 
and have a good time in one's life, — it 's so very 
natural.'' 

" No sin, my dear, I admit ; but there is a certain 
amount of work and trouble that somebody must take 
to carry on the family and the world ; and the mis- 
chief is, that all are agreed in wanting to get rid of it. 
Human nature is above all things lazy. I am lazy my- 
self Everybody is. The whole struggle of society is 
as to who shall eat the hard bread-and-cheese of labor, 
which must be eaten by somebody. Nobody wants it, 
— neither you in the parlor, nor Biddy in the kitchen. 

" *" The mass ought to labor, and we lie on sofas,' is 



A Family-Talk on Reconstruction, yy 

a sentence that would unite more subscribers than 
any confession of faith that ever was presented, 
whether rehgious or poHtical ; and its subscribers 
would be as numerous and sincere in the Free States 
as in the Slave States, or I am much mistaken in my 
judgment. The negroes are men and women, like 
any of the rest of us, and particularly apt in the imi- 
tation of the ways and ideas current in good society ; 
and consequently to learn to play on the piano, and 
to have nothing in particular to do, will be the goal of 
aspiration among colored girls and women, and to do 
housework will seem to them intolerable drudgery, 
simply because it is so among the fair models to whom 
they look up in humble admiration. You see, my 
dear, what it is to live in a democracy. It deprives us 
of the vantage-ground on which we cultivated people 
can stand and say to our neighbor, — ' The cream is 
for me, and the skim-milk for you ; the white bread 
for me, and the brown for you. I am born to amuse 
myself and have a good time, and you are born to do 
everything that is tiresome and disagreeable to me.' 
The ' My Lady Ludlows ' of the Old World can stand 
on their platform and lecture the lower classes from 
the Church Catechism, to ' order themselves lowly and 
reverently to all their betters ' ; and they can base 
their exhortations on the old established law of society 
by which some are born to inherit the earth, and live 



yS The Chimney-Comer. 

a life of ease and pleasure, and others to toil without 
pleasure or amusement, for their support and ag- 
grandizement. An aristocracy, as I take it, is a 
combination of human beings to divide life into two 
parts, one of which shall comprise all social and 
moral advantages, refinement, elegance, leisure, ease, 
pleasure, and amusement, — and the other, incessant 
toil, with the absence of every privilege and blessing 
of human existence. Life thus divided, we aristocrats 
keep the good for ourselves and our children, and 
distribute the evil as the lot of the general mass of 
mankind. The desire to monopolize and to dominate 
is the most rooted form of human selfishness ; it is the 
hydra with many heads, and, cut off in one place, it 
puts out in another. 

"Nominally, the great aristocratic arrangement of 
American society has just been destroyed ; but really, 
I take it, the essential animus of the slave system 
still exists, and pervades the community, North as 
well as South. Everybody is wanting to get the work 
done by somebody else, and to take the money him- 
self; the grinding between employers and employed 
is going on all the time, and the field of controversy 
has only been made wider by bringing in a whole nev/ 
class of laborers. The Irish have now the opportu- 
nity to sustain their aristocracy over the negro. Shall 
they not have somebody to look down upon ? 



A Family-Talk oji Reconstruction. 79 

" All through free society, employers and employed 
are at incessant feud ; and the more free and enlight- 
ened the society, the more bitter the feud. The 
standing complaint of life in America is the badness 
of servants ; and England, which always follows at a 
certain rate behind us in our social movements, is 
beginning to raise very loudly the same complaint. 
The condition of service has been thought worthy of 
public attention in some of the leading British prints ; 
and Ruskin, in a summing-up article, speaks of it as 
a deep ulcer in society, — a thing hopeless of 
remedy." 

" My dear Mr. Theophilus," said my wife, " I can- 
not imagine whither you are rambling, or to w^hat 
purpose you are getting up these horrible shadows. 
You talk of the world as if there were no God in it, 
overruling the selfishness of men, and educating it up 
to order and justice. I do not deny that there is a 
vast deal of truth in what you say. Nobody doubts 
that, in general, human nature is selfish, callous, 
unfeeling, willing to engross all good to itself, and to 
trample on the rights of others. Nevertheless, thanks 
to God's teaching and fatherly care, the world has 
worked along to the point of a great nation founded 
on the principles of strict equality, forbidding all 
monopolies, aristocracies, privileged classes, by its 
very constitution ; and now, by God's wonderful prov- 



So The CJiininey-Conicr. 

idence, this nation has been brought, and forced, as it 
Avere, to overturn and abolish the only aristocratic 
institution that interfered with its free development. 
Does not this look as if a Mightier Power than ours 
were working in and for us, supplementing our weak- 
ness and infirmity ? and if we believe that man is 
always ready to drop everything and let it run back to 
evil, shall we not have faith that God will 7ioi drop the 
noble work he has so evidently taken in hand in this 
nation ? " 

" And I want to know," said Jennie, " why your 
illustrations of selfishness are all drawn from the 
female sex. Why do you speak of girls that marry 
for money, any mor.e than men ? of mistresses of fam- 
ilies that want to be free from household duties and 
responsibilities, rather than of masters?" 

" My charming young lady," said Theophilus, " it is 
a fact that in America, except the slaveholders, women 
have hitherto been the only aristocracy. Women have 
been the privileged class, — the only one to which our 
rough democracy has always and everywhere given 
the precedence, — and consequently the vices of 
aristocrats are more developed in them as a class than 
among men. The leading principle of aristocracy, 
which is to take pay without work, to live on the toils 
and earnings of others, is one which obtains more 
generally among women than among men in this 



A Family- Talk on Reconstruction. 8 1 

country. The men of our country, as a general thing, 
even in our uppermost classes, always propose to 
themselves some work or business by which they may 
acquire a fortune, or enlarge that already made for 
them by their fathers. The women of the same class 
propose to themselves nothing but to live at their 
ease on the money made for them by the labors of 
fathers and husbands. As a consequence, they be- 
come enervated and indolent, — averse to any bracing, 
wholesome effort, either mental or physical. The 
unavoidable responsibilities and cares of a family, in- 
stead of being viewed by them in the light of a noble 
life-work, in which they do their part in the general 
labors of the world, seem to them so many injuries 
and wrongs ; they seek to turn them upon servants, 
and find servants unwilling to take them ; and so 
selfish are they, that I have heard more than one lady 
declare that she did n't care if it was unjust, she 
should like to have slaves, rather than be plagued with 
servants who had so much liberty. All the novels, 
poetry, and light literature of the world, which form 
the general staple of female reading, are based upon 
aristocratic institutions, and impregnated with aristo- 
cratic ideas ; and women among us are constantly 
aspiring to foreign and aristocratic modes of life 
rather than to those of native, republican simplicity. 
How many women are there, think you, that v/ould 
4* _ F . 



S2 TJic CIiiDincy-Conier. 

not go in for aristocracy and aristocratic prerogatives, 
if they were only sure that they themselves should be 
of the privileged class ? To be ' My Lady Duchess/ 
and to have a right by that simple title to the prostrate 
deference of all the lower orders ! How many would 
have firmness to vote against siich an establishment 
merely because it was bad for society ? Tell the fair 
Mrs. Feathercap, 'In order that you may be a duchess, 
and have everything a paradise of elegance and lux- 
ury around you and your children, a hundred pool 
families must have no chance for anything better than 
black bread and muddy water all their lives, a hun- 
dred poor men must work all their lives on such wages 
that a fortnight's sickness will send their families to 
the almshouse, and that no amount of honesty and 
forethought can lay up any provision for old age.' " 

" Come now, sir," said Jennie, " don't tell me that 
there are any girls or women so mean and selfish as 
to want aristocracy or rank so purchased ! You are 
too bad, Mr. Theophilus ! " 

" Perhaps they might not, were it stated in just 
these terms ; yet I think, if the question of the estab- 
lishment of an order of aristocracy among us were put 
to vote, we should find more women than men who 
would go for it ; and they would flout at the conse- 
quences to society with the lively wit and tlie musical 
laugh which make feminine selfishness so genteel and 
agreeable. 



A Family-Talk on Reconstructioit. 83 

" No ! It is a fact, that, in America, the women, 
in the wealthy classes, are like the noblemen of aris- 
tocracies, and the men are the workers. And in all 
this outcry that has been raised about women's wages 
being inferior to those of men there is one thing over- 
looked, — and that is, that women's work is generally 
inferior to that of men, because in every rank they are 
the pets of society, and are excused from the laborious 
drill and training by which men are fitted for their 
callings. Our fair friends come in generally by some 
royal road to knowledge, which saves them the dire 
necessity of real work, — a sort of feminine hop-skip- 
and-jump into science or mechanical skill, — nothing 
like the uncompromising hard labor to which the boy 
is put who would be a mechanic or farmer, a lawyer 
or physician. 

" I admit freely that we men are to blame for most 
of the faults of our fair nobility. There is plenty of 
heroism, abundance of energy, and love of noble 
endeavor lying dormant in these sheltered and petted 
daughters of the better classes ; but we keep it down 
and smother it. Fathers and brothers think it dis- 
creditable to themselves not to give their daughters 
and sisters the means of living in idleness ; and any 
adventurous fair one, who seeks to end the ennui of 
utter aimlessness by applying herself to some occupa- 
tion whereby she may earn her own living, infallibly 



$4 TJic CJiiuiUty-Coyxcr. 

draws down on licr the comments of her whole circle : 
— ' Keeping school, is she ? Is n't her father rich 
enough to support her? What could possess her ?'" 

" I am glad, my dear Sir Oracle, that you are 
beginning to recollect yourself and temper your severi- 
ties on our sex," said my wife. " As usual, there is 
much truth lying about loosely in the vicinity of your 
assertions ; but they are as far from being in them- 
selves the truth as would be their exact opposites. 

" The class of American women who travel, live 
abroad, and represent our country to the foreign eye, 
have acquired the reputation of being Sybarites in 
luxury and extravagance, and there is much in the 
modes of life that are creeping into our richer circles 
to justify this. 

" Miss Murray, ex-maid-of-honor to the Queen of 
England, among other impressions which she received 
from an extended tour through our country, states it 
as her conviction that young American girls of the 
better classes are less helpful in nursing the sick and 
in the general duties of family life than the daughters 
of the aristocracy of England ; and I am inclined to 
believe it, because even the Queen has taken special 
pains to cultivate habits of energy and self-helpfulness 
in her children. One of the toys of the Princess 
Royal was said to be a cottage of her own, furnished 
with every accommodation for cooking and hou; 



i:)\;- 



A Family-Talk on Reconstruction. 85 

keeping, where she from tune to time enacted the part 
of housekeeper, making bread and biscuit, boihng 
potatoes wliich she herself had gathered from her own 
garden-patch, and inviting her royal parents to meals 
of her own preparing ; and report says, that the digni- 
taries of the Oerman court have been horrified at the 
energetic determination of the young royal housekeeper 
to overlook her own linen-closets and attend to her 
own affairs. But as an offset to what I have been say- 
ing, it must be admitted that America is a country where 
a young woman can be self-supporting without forfeit- 
ing her place in society. All our New England and 
Western towns show us female teachers who are as 
well received and as much caressed in society, and as 
often contract advantageous marriages, as any women 
whatever ; and the productive labor of American 
women, in various arts, trades, and callings, would be 
found, I think, not inferior to that of any women in 
the world. 

" Furthermore, the history of the late war has shown 
them capable of every form of heroic endeavor. We 
have had hundreds of Florence Nightingales, and an 
amount of real hard work has been done by female 
hands not inferior to that performed by men in the 
camp and field, and enough to make sure that Ameri- 
can womanhood is not yet so enervated as seriously 
to interfere with the prospects of free republican 
society." 



S6 TJic CJiimney-Corner. 

" I wonder," said Jennie, " what it is in our country 
that spoils the working-classes that come into it. 
They say that the emigrants, as they land here, are 
often simple-hearted people, willing to work, accus- 
tomed to early hours and plain living, decorous and 
respectful in their manners. It would seem as if 
aristocratic drilling had done them good. In a few 
months they become brawling, impertinent, grasping, 
Avant high wages, and are very unwilling to work. I 
went to several intelligence-offices the other day to 
look for a girl for Marianne, and I thought, by the 
way the candidates catechized the ladies, and tthe airs 
they took upon them, that they considered themselves 
the future mistresses interrogating their subordinates. 

" ' Does ye expect me to do the washin' with the 
cook in' .? ' 

" ' Yes.' 

" ' Thin I '11 niver go to that place ! ' 

" ' And does ye expect me to get the early breakfast 
for yer husband to be off in the train every mornin' ? ' 

'''Yes.' 

" ' I niver does that, — that ought to be a second 
girl's work.' 

" ' How many servants does ye keep, ma'am ? ' 

" ' Two.' 

" ' I niver lives with people that keeps but two ser- 
vants.' 



A Family-Talk on Reconstruction. By 

" ' How many has ye in yer family ?' 

" ' Seven.' 

" ' That 's too large a family. Has ye much com- 
pany ? ' 

" ' Yes, we have company occasionally.' 

" ' Thin I can't come to ye ; it '11 be too harrd a 
place.' 

" In fact, the thing they were all in quest of seemed 
to be a very small family, with very high wages, and 
many perquisites and privileges. 

"This is the kind of work-people our manners and 
institutions make of people that come over here. I 
remember one day seeing a coachman touch his cap 
to his mistress when she spoke to him, as is the way 
in Europe, and hearing one or two others saying 
among themselves, — 

" ' That chap 's a greenie ; he '11 get over that 
soon.' " 

" All these things show," said I, " that the staff of 
power has passed from the hands of gentility into 
thoy^. of labor. We may think the working-classes 
soi/?owhat unseemly in their assertion of self-impor- 
ta/»cc ; but, after all, are the}^, considering their infe- 
rcr advantages of breeding, any more overbearing and 
impertinent than the upper classes have always been 
<o them in all ages and countries ? 

" When Biddy looks long, hedges in her work with 



8S The Chiiniiey-Corner. 

many conditions, and is careful to get the most she 
can for the least labor, is she, after all, doing any more 
than you or I or all the rest of the world ? I myself 
will not write articles for five dollars a page, when 
there are those who will give me fifteen. I would not 
do double duty as an editor on a salaiy of seven 
thousand, when I could get ten thousand for less 
work. 

" Biddy and her mistress are two human beings, 
with the same human wants. Both want to escape 
trouble, to make their life comfortable and easy, with 
the least outlay of expense. Biddy's capital is her 
muscles and sinews ; and she wants to get as many 
greenbacks in exchange for them as her wit and 
shrewdness will enable her to do. You feel, when 
you bargain with her, that she is nothing to you, 
except so far as her strength and knowledge may save 
you care and trouble ; and she feels that you are 
nothing to her, except so far as she can get your 
money for her work. The free-and-easy airs of those 
seeking employment show one thing, — that the 
country in general is prosperous, and that openings 
for profitable employment are so numerous that it is 
not thought necessary to try to conciliate favor. If 
the community were at starvation-point, and the loss 
of a situation brought fear of the almshouse, the 
laboring-class would be more subservient. As it is, 



A Family-Talk on Reconstniction. 89 

there is a little spice of the bitterness of a past age of 
servitude in their present attitude, — a bristling, self- 
defensive impertinence, which will gradually smooth 
away as society learns to accommodate itself to the 
new order of things." 

" Well, but, papa," said Jennie, " don't you think all 
this a very severe test, if applied to us women particu- 
larly, more than to the men ? Mr. Theophilus seems 
to think women are aristocrats, and go for enslaving 
the lower classes out of mere selfishness ; but I say 
that we are a great deal more strongly tempted than 
men, because all these annoyances and trials of do- 
mestic life come upon us. It is very insidious, the 
aristocratic argument, as it appeals to us ; there seems 
much to be said in its favor. It does appear to me 
that it is better to have servants and work-people 
tidy, industrious, respectful, and decorous, as they are 
in Europe, than domineering, impertinent, and negli- 
gent, as they are here, — and it seems that there is 
something in our institutions that produces these dis- 
agreeable traits ; and I presume that the negroes v/ill 
eventually be travelling the same road as the Irish, 
and from the same influences. 

" When people see all these things, and feel all the 
inconveniences of them, I don't wonder that they are 
tempted not to like democracy, and to feel as if 
aristocratic institutions made a more agreeable state 



90 The Chimnty-Contcr. 

of society. It is not such a bU\nk, IwUl. downright 
piece of brutal seltishness as Mr. Theophilus there 
seems to suppose, for us to wish there were some 
quiet, submissive, laborious lower class, who would be 
content to work for kind treatment and moderate 
wages." 

•• But, my little dear," said I, " the matter is not left 
to our choice. Wish it or not wish it, it 's what we 
evidently can't have. The day for that thing is past. 
The power is passing out oi the hands of the culti- 
vated few into those of the strong, laborious many. 
Xumhi'-rs is the king of our era : and he will reign 
over us, whether we will hear or whether we will for- 
bear. The sighers for an obedient lower class and 
the mourners for slavery may get ready their crape, 
and have their pocket-handkerchiefs bordered with 
black ; for they have much weeping to do, and for 
many years to come. The good old feudal times, 
when two thirds of the. population thought themselves 
born only for the honor, glory, and profit ^i the other 
third, are gone, with all their beautitul devotions, all 
their trappings of song and story. In the land where 
such institutions were most deeply rooted ar.d most 
firmly established, they are assailed every day by hard 
hands and stout hearts ; and their position re:>embles 
that of some of the picturesque ruins of Italy, which 
are constantly being torn away to build prosaic mod- 
ern shops and houses. 



A Family -Talk on Reconstruction. 91 

" This great democratic movement is coming down 
into modern society with a march as irresistible as the 
glacier moves down from the mountains. Its front is 
in America, — and behind are England, France, Italy, 
Prussia, and the Mohammedan countries. In all, the 
rights of the laboring masses are a living force, bear- 
ing slowly and inevitably all before it. Our v/ar has 
been a marshalling of its armies, commanded by a 
hard-handed, inspired man of the working-class. An 
intelligent American, recently resident in Egypt, says 
it was affecting to notice the interest with which the 
working - classes there were looking upon our late 
struggle in America, and the earnestness of their 
wishes for the triumph of the Union. 'It is our 
cause, it is for us,' they said, as said the cotton-spin- 
ners of England and the silk-weavers of Lyons. The 
forces of this mighty movement are still directed by a 
man from, the lower orders, the sworn foe of exclusive 
privileges and landed aristocracies. If Andy Johnson 
is consistent with himself, with the principles which 
raised him from a tailor's bench to the head of a 
mighty nation, he will see to it that the work that 
Lincoln began is so thoroughly done, that every man 
and every woman in America, of whatever race or 
complexion, shall have exactly equal rights before the 
law, and be free to rise or fall according to their indi- 
vidual intelligence, industry, and moral worth. So 



o: The Chimney-Comer, 

long .IS ovorvthin^' is not strictly in aoooi\l.\nco with 
our principles ot* dcn\ocr.\cv. so loi^^; as there is in any 
part of the country an aristocratic upper class who 
despise labor, and a laboring: lower class that is de- 
nied equal political rights, so long this grinding and 
discord between the two will never cease in America. 
It will make trouble not only in the South., but in the 
North, — trouble between all employers and en\- 
ployed, — trouble in every branch and departnient of 
L\bor, — trouble in every parlor and every kitchen. 

"What is it that has driven every American woman 
out of domestic service, when donaesiic service is tull 
as well paid, is easier, healthier, and in many cases tar 
more agreeable, than shop and tactorv work? It is, 
more than anvthing else, the inlluence ot" slavery in 
the South, — its insensible inlluence on the minds of 
mistresses, giving them talse ideas of what ought to 
be the position and treatment of a temale citi.en in 
domestic service, and its very marked inlluence on 
the minds of freedom-loving Americans, causing them 
to choose any position rather than one which is re- 
garded as assimilating them to sla\es. It is dithcult 
to say what are the verv worst results of a svstem so 
altogether bad as that of slaver\ ; but one ot" the worst 
is certainly the utter contempt it brings on useful 
labor, and the consequent utter ]>hysical and moral 
dciiradation of a lariie bodv of the whites ; .uul this 



A I'amily-'I alk on KccourAruction. cj^ 

contempt of useful labor has been constantly spread- 
in;^ like an infection from the Southern to the North- 
ern States, particularly among women, who, as our 
fricnrl here \ix, truly said, arc by our worship and 
exaltation of them made peculiarly liable to take the 
malaria of aristocratic society. J>et anybody observe 
the conversation in good society for an hour or two, 
and hear the tone in which servant-girls, seamstresses, 
mechanics, and all who work for their living, are 
sometimes mentioned, and he will see, that, while 
every one of the speakers professes to regard useful 
labor as respectable, she is yet deeply imbued with 
the leaven of aristocratic ideas. 

"In the South the contempt* for labor bred of 
slavery has so permeated society, that we see great, 
coarse, vulgar lazzaroni lying about in rags and ver- 
min, and dependent on government rations, maintain- 
ing, as their only source of self-respect, that they 
never have done and never will do a stroke of useful 
work, in all their lives. Jn the North there are, I 
believe, no men who would make such a boast; but I 
think there are many women — beautiful, fascinating 
lazzaroni of the parlor and boudoir — who make their 
boast of elegant helplessness and utter incompetence 
for any of woman's duties with equal naivete. The 
Spartans made their slaves drunk, to teach their chil- 
dren the evils of intoxication ; and it seems to be the 



94 The Chimney-Comcr, 

policv of ;i l.\ri;o diss in the South now to kocp down 
and dogiwdo iho or.ly woikin^^ *.-l.iss thcv li.ivo. tor the 
sake of teaching their children to dosjMse woik. 

'• ^^"e ot' tlie North, who know the dii;nity of kibor, 
who know the v.ihio of free and equal institutions, 
who have enjvned ad\antai;es tor seeing; their opera- 
tion, oui;ht, in true brotherhness, to exereise the 
power given us by the present position kA the people 
of the Southern States, and put things thoroughly 
right ^/^>r them, well knowing, that, though they may 
not like it at the monient, thev will like it in the end, 
and that it will bring theu\ jHwee. plenty, and settled 
prosperity, sueh as they have long en\ ied here in the 
North. It is no kindness to an in\alid brother, half 
reeovered tVonr delirium, to leave hin\ a knite to euL 
his throat with, should he be so disposevl. We should 
rather appeal from Thilip drunk to Philip sober, and 
do real kindness, trusting to the future for our mood 
of gratitude. 

*' Cnving equal politieal rights to all the inhabitants 
of the Southern States will be their shortest way to 
quiet and to wealth. It will avert what is else almost 
certain, — a war of races ; since all experience shows 
that the b.dlot introduces the very politest relations 
between the higher and lower classes. If the right be 
restricted, let it be by requirements oi property and 
education, aj^plying to all the population equally. 



A J''amily -Talk on RccowUruction. 95 

"Meanwhile, we titizens and citizcne'>oc:> of tlie. 
North should remember that Reconstruction means 
something more than setting things right in the South- 
ern States. W^e have saved our government and 
institutions, but we have paid a fearful price for their 
salvation ; and we ought to prove now that they are 
worth the price. 

"'i'lic empty chair, never to be filled, — the light 
gone out on it« candlestick, never on earth to be 
rekindled, — gallant souls that have exhaled to heaven 
in slow torture and starvation, — the precious blood 
that has drenched a hundred battle-fields, — all call 
to us with warning voices, and tell us not to let such 
sacrifices be in vain. They call on us by our clear 
understanding of the great principles of democratic 
equality, for which our martyred brethren suffered and 
died, to show to all the world that their death was no 
mean and useless waste, but a glorious investment for 
the future of mankind. 

"This war, these sufferings, these sacrifices, ought 
1.0 make HMcry American man and woman look on 
Ijjmself and herself as belonging to a royal priesthood, 
a peculiar people. The blood of our slain ought to 
be a gulf, wide and deep as the Atlantic, dividing 
us from the opinions and the practices of countries 
whose government and society are founded on other 
and antagonistic ideas. Democratic republicanism 



g6 TJic CJiiDUuy-Conic}'. 

has never yet been perfectly worked out either in this 
or any other country. It is a splendid edifice, half 
built, deformed by rude scaffolding, noisy with the 
clink of trowels, blinding the eyes with the dust of 
lime, and endangering our heads with falling brick. 
We make our way over heaps of shavings and lumber 
to view the stately apartments, — we endanger our 
necks in climbing ladders standing in the place of 
future staircases ; but let us not for all this cry out 
that the old rat-holed mansions of former ages, with 
their mould, and moss, and cockroaches, are better 
than this new palace. There is no lime-dust, no clink 
of trowels, no rough scaffolding there, to be sure, and 
life goes on very quietly ; but there is the foul air of 
slow and sure decay. 

" Republican institutions in America are in a tran- 
sitioh state ; they have not yet separated themselves 
from foreign and antagonistic ideas and traditions, 
derived from old countries ; and the labors necessary 
for the upbuilding of society are not yet so adjusted 
that there is mutual pleasure and comfort in the 
relations of employer and employed. We still incline 
to class-distinctions and aristocracies. We incline to 
the scheme of dividing the world's work into two 
orders : first, physical labor, which is held to be rude 
and vulgar, and the province of a lower class ; and 
second, brain labor, held to be refined and aristo- 



A Family -Talk on Reconstruction. 97 

cratic, and the province of a higher class. Mean- 
while, the Creator, who is the greatest of levellers, 
has given to every human being both a physical sys- 
tem, needing to be kept in order by physical labor, 
and an intellectual or brain power, needing to be kept 
in order by brain labor. Work^ use, employment, is 
the condition of health in both ; and he who works 
either to the neglect of the other lives but a half-life, 
and is an imperfect human being. 

" The aristocracies of the Old World claim that 
their only labor should be that of the brain ; and they 
keep their physical system in order by violent exer- 
cise, which is made genteel from the fact only that it 
is not useful or productive. It would be losing caste 
to refresh the muscles by handling the plough or the 
axe ; and so foxes and hares must be kept to be 
hunted, and whole counties turned into preserves, in 
order that the nobility and gentry may have physical 
exercise in a way befitting their station, — that is to 
say, in a way that produces nothing, and does good 
only to themselves. 

"The model republican uses his brain for the 
highest purposes of brain work, and his muscles in 
productive physical labor ; and useful labor he respects 
above that which is merely agreeable. 

" When this equal respect for physical and mental 
labor shall have taken possession of every American 
5 G 



98 The Chimncy-Corner. 

citizen, there will be no so-called laboring class; 
there will no more be a class all muscle without brain 
power to guide it, and a class all brain without mus- 
cular power to execute. The labors of society will 
be lighter, because each individual will take his part 
in them ; they will be performed better, because no 
one will be overburdened. 

"In those days. Miss Jennie, it will be an easier 
matter to keep house, because, housework being no 
longer regarded as degrading drudgery, you will find 
a superior class of women ready to engage in it. 

■" Eveiy young girl and woman, who in her sphere 
and by her example shows that she is not ashamed 
of domestic labor, and that she considers the neces- 
sary work and duties of family life as dignified and 
important, is helping to bring on this good day. 
Louis Philippe once jestingly remarked, — ' I have 
this qualification for being a king in these days, that 
I have blacked my own boots, and could black them 
again.' 

" Every American ought to cultivate, as his pride 
and birthright, the habit of self-helpfulness. Our 
command of the labors of good employes in any de- 
partment is liable to such interruptions, that he who 

* . ... 

has blacked his own boots, and can do it again, is, on 

the whole, likely to secure the most comfort in life. 
" As to that which Mr. Ruskin pronounces to be a 



A Family -Talk on Reconstruction. ' 99 

deep, irremediable ulcer in society, namely, domestic 
service, we hold that the last workings of pure democ- 
racy will cleanse and heal it. When right ideas are 
sufficiently spread, — when everybody is self-helpful 
and capable of being self-supporting, — when there is 
a fair start for every human being in the race of life, 
and all its prizes are, without respect of persons, to 
be obtained by the best runner, — when every kind 
of useful labor is thoroughly respected, — then there 
will be a clear, just, wholesome basis of intercourse 
on which employers and employed can move without 
wrangling or discord. 

" Renouncing all claims to superiority on the one 
hand, and all thought of servility on the other, service 
can be rendered by fair contracts and agreements, 
with that mutual respect and benevolence which 
every human being owes to every other. 

" But for this transition period, which is wearing 
out the life of so many women, and making so many 
households uncomfortable, I have some alleviating 
suggestions, which I shall give in my next chapter." 



IV. 

IS WOMAN A WORKER? 

" T)ArA, do you see what the Kvening Post says 
-L of your New-Year's article on Reconstruc- 
tion?" said Jennie, as we were all silling in the 
library after tea. 

" I have not seen it." 

"Well, then, the charming writer, whoever he is, 
takes up for us girls and women, and maintains thai 
no work of any sort ought to be expeeletl of us ; that 
our only mission in life is to be beautiful, and to 
refresh and elevate the si)irits of men by being so. 
If I get a husband, my mission is to be always be- 
comingly dressed, to display most captivating toi- 
lettes,- and to be always in good spirits, — as, under 
the circumstances, I always should be, — and thus 
'renew his spirits' when he comes in weary wilh tiie 
toils of life. Household cares are to be far from 
me : they destroy my cheerfulness and injure my 
beauty. 



Is Woman a Worker? lOi 

"lie says that the New England standarrl of ex- 
cellence as applied to woman has been a mistaken 
one ; and, in consequence, though the girls are beau- 
tiful, the matrons are faded, overworked, and unin- 
teresting ; and that such a state of society tenrls to 
immorality, because, when wives arc no longer charm- 
ing, men are open to the temptation to desert their 
firesides, and get into mischief generally. He seems 
jjarticularly to complain of your calling ladies who 
do nothing the ' fascinating lazzaroiii of the parlor 
and boudoir.' " 

"There was too much truth back of that arrow 
not to wound," said 'J'heophilus 'i'horo, who was en- 
sconced, as usual, in his dark corner, whence he 
supervises our discussions. 

" Come, Mr. Thoro, we won't have any of your 
bitter moralities," saifl Jennie; "they are only to 
be taken as the invariable bay-leaf which Professor 
]ilot introduces into all his recipes for soups and 
stews, — a little elegant bitterness, to be kept taste- 
fully in the background. You see now, papa, I 
should like the vocation of being beautiful. It would 
just suit me to wear point-lace and jewelry, and to 
have life revolve round me, as some beautiful star, 
and feel that I had nothing to do but shine and re- 
fresh the spirits of all gazers, and that in this way I 
was truly useful, and fulfilling the great end of my 



102 TJic CJihnncy-Conicr. 

being ; but alas for this doctrine ! all women have 
not beauty. The most of us can only hope not to 
be called ill-looking, and, when wc get ourselves up 
with care, to look fresh and trim and "agreeable ; 
which fiict interferes wdth the theory." 

"Well, for my part," said young Rudolpir, "I go 
for the theory of the beautiful. If ever I marry, it 
is to find an asylum for ideality. I don't want to 
make a culinary marriage or a business partnership. 
I want a being whom I can keep in a sphere of 
poetry and beauty, out of the dust and grime of every- 
day life." 

"Then," said Mr. Theophilus, "you must either 
be a rich man in your own right, or your fair ideal 
must have a handsome fortune of her own." 

"I never will marry a rich wife," quoth Rudolph. 
" My wife must be supported by me, not I by her." 

Rudolph is another of the JiahUucs of our chim- 
ney-corner, representing the order of young knight- 
hood in America, and his dreams and fancies, if 
impracticable, are always of a kind to make every 
one think him a good fellow. He who has no ro- 
mantic dreams at twenty-one will be a horribly dry 
peascod at fifty ; therefore it is that I gaze rever- 
ently at all Rudolph's chateaus in Spain, which 
want nothing to complete them except solid earth 
to stand on. 



Is Woman a Worker? 1 03 

"And pray," said Thcopliilus, "how long will it 
take a young lawyer or physician, starting with no 
heritage but his own brain, to create a sphere of 
poetry and beauty in which to keep his goddess? 
How much a year will be necessary, as the Juiglish 
say, to do this garden of Eden, whereinto shall enter 
'only the poetry of life?" 

" I don't know. I have n't seen it near enough 
to consider. It is because I know the difficulty of 
its attainment that I have no jjresent thoughts of 
marriage. Marriage is to me in the bluest of all 
blue distances, — far off, mysterious, and dreamy as 
the Mountains of the Moon or sources of tlie Nile. 
It shall come only when I have secured a fortune 
that shall place my wife above all necessity of work 
or care." 

"I desire to hear from you," said Theophilus, 
"when you have found the sum that will keep a 
woman from care. I know of women now inhabit- 
ing palaces, waited on at every turn by servants, with 
carriages, horses, jewels, laces, cashmeres, enough 
for princesses, who are eaten up by care. One lies 
awake all night on account of a wrinkle in the waist 
of her dress ; another is dying because no silk of a 
certain inexpressible shade is to be found in New 
York; a third has had a dress sent home, which 
has proved such a failure that life seems no longer 



104 '^^^^^ CJiinuh-y-Coyucr. 

worth having. If it were not for the consolations of 
religion, one does n't know what would beeon^e of 
her. 'i'he fact is, that care and labor are as nuich 
correlated to human existence as shadow is to light ; 
there is \\q such thing as excluding them from any 
mortal lot. You may make a canary-bird or a gold- 
fish live in absolute contentment without a care or" 
labor, but a human being you cannot. Human be- 
ings are restless and active in their veiy nature, antl 
will do something, and that something will prove a 
care, a labor, and a fatigue, arrange it how you will. 
As long as there is anything to be desired and not 
yet attained, so long its attainment will be attempted ; 
so long as that attainment is doubtful or dillicuU, 
so long will there be care and anxiety. When bound- 
less wealth releases woman from every f;imily care, 
she immediately makes herself a new set of cares 
in another direction, and has just as many anxieties 
as the most toilful housekeeper, only they are of a 
different kind. Talk of labor, ami look at the upper 
classes in I^ondon or in New York in the fashionable 
season. Do any women work harder ? To rush from 
crowd to crowd all night, night after night, seeing 
what they are tired of, making the agreeable over 
an abyss of inward yawning, crowded, jostled, breath- 
ing hot air, and crushetl in halls and stairways, with- 
out a moment of leisure for months and months, till 



Is Woman a Worker? 105 

brain and nerve and sense reel, and the country is 
longed for as a period of resuscitation and relief! 
Such is the release from labor and fatigue brought 
by wealth. The only thing that makes all this labor 
at all endurable is, that it is utterly and entirely use- 
less, and does no good to any one in creation ; this 
alone makes it genteel, and distinguishes it from the 
vulgar toils of a housekeeper. These delicate crea- 
tures, who can go to three or four parties a night 
for three months, would be utterly desolate if they 
had to watch one night in a sick-room ; and though 
they can exhibit any amount of physical endurance 
and vigor in crowding into assembly rooms, and 
breathe tainted air in an opera-house with the most 
martyr-like constancy, they could not sit one half- 
hour in the close room where the sister of charity 
spends hours in consoling the sick or aged poor." 

" Mr. Theophilus is quite at home now," said Jen- 
nie ; " only start him on the track of fashionable life, 
and he takes the course like a hound. But hear, 
now, our champion of the Evening Post : — 

"'The instinct of women to seek a life of repose, 
their eagerness to attain the life of elegance, does not 
mean contempt for labor, but it is a confession of 
unfitness for labor. Women were not intended to 
work, — not because work is ignoble, but because it 
is as disastrous to the beauty of a woman as is fric- 
5* 



io6 TJic CJiuJUicy-Conwr. 

tion to the bloom and softness of a llowcr. Woman 
is to bo kept in the garden of life ; she is to rest, to 
receive, to praise ; she is to be kept from the work- 
shop world, where innocence is snatched with rude 
hands, and softness is blistered into unsightlincss or 
hardened into adamant. No social truth is more in 
need of exposition and illustration than this one ; 
and, above all, the people of New England need io 
know^ it, and, better, they need to believe it. 

" ' It is therefore with regret that we discover Chris- 
toi^hcr C~"rowfield applying so harshly, and, as we think 
so indiscriminatingly, the theory of work t'o women, 
and teaching a society made up of women sacrificed 
in the workshops of the state, or to the dust-pans and 
kitchens of the house, that womei\ must work, ought 
to work, and are dishonored if they do not work ; and 
that a woman committed to the drudgery of a house- 
hold is more creditably employed than when she is 
charming, fascinating, irresistible, in the parlor or 
boudoir. The consequence of this fatal mistake is 
manifest throughout New England, — in New Eng- 
land, where the girls are all beautiful and the wives 
and mothers faded, disfigured, and without charm or 
attractiveness. The moment a girl marries in New 
England she is apt to become a drudge, or a lay figure 
on which to exhibit the latest fashions. She never 
has beautiful hands, and she would not have a beauti- 



Is Woman a Worker? 107 

ful face if a utilitarian society could " apply " her face 
to anything but the pleasure of the eye. Her hands 
lose their shape and softness after childhood, and 
domestic drudgery destroys her beauty of form and 
softness and bloom of complexion after marriage. 'J'o 
correct, or rather to break up, this despotism of 
household cares, or of work, over woman, American 
society must be taught that women will inevitably fide 
and deteriorate, unless it insures repose and comfort 
to them. It must be taught that reverence for beauty 
is the normal condition, while the theory of work, 
applied to women, is disastrous alike to beauty and 
morals. Work, when it is destructive to men or wo- 
men, is forced and unjust. 

" ' All the great masculine or creative epochs have 
been distinguished by spontaneous work on the part 
of men, and universal reverence and care for beauty. 
The praise of work, and sacrifice of women to this 
great heartless devil of work, belong only to, and are 
the social doctrine of, a mechanical age and a utilita- 
rian epoch. And if the New England idea of .social 
life continues to bear so cruelly on woman, we shall 
have a reaction somewhat unexpected and shocking.' " 

"Well now, say what you will," said Rudolph, "you 
have expressed my idea of the conditions of the sex. 
Woman was not made to work ; she was made to be 
taken care of by man. All that is severe and trying. 



loS TJic Chimncy-Conicr. 

whether in study or in practical Hfe, is and ouoht to 
be in its very nature essentially the \York of the male 
sex. The value ot" woman is precisely the value of 
those priceless works of art for which we build nui- 
seums, — which we shelter antl ^uard as the world's 
choicest heritage ; and a lovely, cultivated, retuied 
woman, thus sheltered, and guarded, and developed, 
has a worth that cannot be estimated by any gross, 
material standard. So I subscribe to the sentiments 
of Miss Jennie's friend without scniple." 

'* The great trouble in settling all these society ques- 
tions," said I, "lies in the gold-washing, — the cra- 
dling I think the miners call it. If all the quartz were 
in one stratum and all the gold in another, it would 
save us a vast deal of trouble. In the ideas of Jen- 
nie's friend (^i the Evening Post there is a line of 
truth and a line of fLilsehood so interwoven and 
threaded together that it is impossible wholly to as- 
sent or dissent. So with your ideas, Rudoli>h, there 
is a degree of truth in them, but there is also a fal- 
lacy. 

"It is a truth, that woman as a sex ought not to do 
the hard work of the world, either social, intellectual, 
or moral. There are evidences in her pliysiology that 
this was not intended for her, and our friend of the 
Evening Post is right in saying that any country will 
advance more rapidly in civiH/ation and rolinemcnt 



Is Woman a Worker? 109 

where woman is thus sheltered and protected. And I 
think, furthermore, that there is no country in the 
world where women are so much considered and cared 
for and sheltered, in every walk of life, as in America. 
]n. JCngland and France, — all over the continent of 
Jvjrope, in fact, — the other sex are deferential to 
women only from some presumption of their social 
standing, or from the fact of acquaintanceship ; but 
among strangers, and under circumstances where no 
particular rank or position can be inferred, a woman 
travelling in »gland or France is jostled and pushed 
to the wall, and left to take her own chance, precisely 
as if she were not a woman. Deference to delicacy 
and weakness, the instinct of protection, does not ap- 
pear to characterize the masculine population of any 
other r^uarter of the world so much as that of America. 
In France, les Messieurs will form a circle round the 
fire in the receiving-room of a railroad station, and sit, 
tranquilly smoking their cigars, while ladies who do 
not happen to be of their acquaintance are standing 
shivering at the other side of the room. In England, 
if a lady is incautiously booked for an outside place 
on a coach, in hope of seeing the scenery, and the 
day turns out hopelessly rainy, no gentleman in the 
coach below ever thinks of offering to change seats 
with her, though it pour torrents. In America, the 
roughest backwoods steamboat or canal-boat captain 



1 10 TJic CliiDincy-Conicr. 

always, as a matter of course, considers himself 
charged with the protection of the ladies. ' Place aux 
ihinics ' is written in the heart of many a shaggy fellow 
who could not utter a French word any more than 
could a buftalo. It is just as I have before said, — 
women are the recognized aristocracy, the only aris- 
tocracy, of America; and, so far from regarding this 
fact as objectionable, it is an unceasing source of 
pride in my country. 

"That kind of knightly feeling towards woman 
which reverences her delicacy, her frailty, which pro- 
tects and cares for her, is, I think, the crown of man- 
hood ; and without it a man is only a rough animal. 
But our fair aristocrats and their knightly defenders 
need to be cautioned lest they lose their position, as 
many privileged orders have before done, by an arro- 
gant and selfish use of power. 

" I have said that the vices of aristocracy are more 
developed among women in America than among 
men, and that, while there are no men in the North- 
ern States who are not ashamed of living a merely 
idle life of pleasure, there are many women who make 
a boast of helplessness and ignorance in woman's 
family duties which any man would be ashamed to 
make with regard to man's duties, as if such helpless- 
ness and ignorance were a grace and a charm. 

" There are women who contentedly live on, year 



Is Woman a Worker? ill 

after year, a life of idleness, while the husband and 
father is straining every nerve, growing prematurely 
old and gray, abridged of almost every form of recre- 
ation or pleasure, — all that he may keep them in a 
state of careless ease and festivity. It may be very 
fine, very generous, very knightly, in the man who 
thus toils at the oar that his princesses may enjoy 
their painted voyages ; but what is it for the women ? 

"A woman is a moral being — an immortal soul 
— before she is a woman ; and as such she is charged 
by her Maker with some share of the great burden of 
work which lies on the world. 

"Self-denial,- the bearing of the cross, are stated by 
Christ as indispensable conditions to the entrance into 
his kingdom, and no exception is made for man or 
woman. Some task, some burden, some cross, each 
one must carry; and there must be something done 
in every true and worthy life, not as amusement, but 
as duty, — not as play, but as earnest work, — and no 
human being can attain to the Christian standard 
without this. 

*' When Jesus Christ took a towel and girded him- 
self, poured water into a basin, and washed his dis- 
ciples' feet, he performed a significant and sacrament- 
al act, which no man or woman should ever forget. 
If wealth and rank and power absolve from the ser- 
vices of life, then certainly were Jesus Christ absolved, 



112 The CJiiniiiLy-Corncy. 

as he says, — ' Ye call me Master, and Lord. If I, 
then, your Lord and ]\ Lister, have washed your feet, ye 
also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have 
given you an example, that ye should do as I have 
done to you.' 

" Let a man who seeks to make a terrestrial para- 
dise for the woman of his heart, — to absolve her 
from all care, from all labor, — to teach her to accept 
and to receive the labor of others without any attempt 
to offer labor in return, — consider whether he is not 
thus going directly against the fundamental idea of 
Christianity, — taking the direct way to make his idol 
selfish and exacting, to rob her of the highest and 
noblest beauty of womanhood. 

"In that chapter of the Bible where the relation 
between man and woman is stated, it is thus said, 
with quaint simi)licity : ' It is not good that the 
man should be alone ; I will make him an help mcd 
for him.' Woman the helper of man, not his toy, — 
not a picture, not a statue, not a work of art, but a 
HELPER, a doer, — such is the view of the Bible and 
the Christian religion. 

" It is not necessary that women should work phys- 
ically or morally to an extent which impairs beauty. 
In France, where woman is harnessed with an ass to 
the plough which her husband drives, — where she 
digs, and wields the pickaxe, — she becomes prema- 



Is Woman a Worker? 113 

turely hideous j but in America, where woman reigns 
as queen in every household, she may surely be a 
good and thoughtful housekeeper, she may have phys- 
ical strength exercised in lighter domestic toils, not 
only without injuring her beauty, but with manifest 
advantage to it. Almost every growing young girl 
would be the better in health, and therefore hand- 
somer, for two hours of active housework daily ; and 
the habit of usefulness thereby gained would be an 
equal advantage to her moral development. The 
labors of modern, well-arranged houses are not in any 
sense severe ; they are as gentle as any kind of exer- 
cise that can be devised, and they bring into play 
muscles that ought to be exercised to be healthily de- 
veloped. 

" The great danger to the beauty of American wo- 
men does not lie, as the writer of the Post contends, 
in an overworking of the physical system which shall 
stunt and deform j on the contrary, American women 
of the comfortable classes are in danger of a loss of 
physical beauty from the entire deterioration of the 
muscular system for want of exercise. Take the life 
of any American girl in one of our large towns, and 
see what it is. We have an educational system of 
public schools which for intellectual culture is a just 
matter of pride to any country. From the time that 
the girl is seven years old, her first thought, when 



114 TJie Chimney-Coma'. 

she rises in the morning, is to eat her breakfast and 
be off to her school. There really is no more time 
than enough to allow her to make that complete toilet 
which every well-bred female ought to make, and to 
take her morning meal before her school begins. She 
returns at noon with just time to eat her dinner, and 
the afternoon session begins. She comes home at 
night with books, slate, and lessons enough to occupy 
her evening. What time is there for teaching her any 
household work, for teaching her to cut or fit or sew, 
or to inspire her with any taste for domestic duties ? 
Her arms have no exercise ; her chest and lungs, and 
all the complex system of muscles which are to be 
perfected by quick and active movement, are com- 
pressed while she bends over book and slate and 
drawing-board ; while the ever-active brain is kept all 
the while going at the top of its speed. She grows 
up spare, thin, and delicate ; and while the Irish girl, 
who sweeps the parlors, rubs the silver, and irons the 
muslins, is developing a finely rounded arm and bust, 
the American girl has a pair of bones at her sides, 
and a bust composed of cotton padding, the work of a 
skilful dress-maker. Nature, who is no respecter of 
persons, gives to Colleen Bawn, who uses her arms 
and chest, a beauty which perishes in the gentle, lan- 
guid Edith, who does nothing but study and read." 
" But is it not a fact," said Rudolph, " as stated by 



Is Wommt a Worker f 115 

our friend of the Post, that American matrons are 
perishing, and their beauty and grace all withered, 
from overwork ? " 

"It is," said my wife; "but why? It is because 
they are brought up without vigor or muscular 
strength, without the least practical experience of 
household labor, or those means of saving it which 
come by daily practice ; and then, after marriage, 
when physically weakened by maternity, embarrassed 
by the care of young children, they are often suddenly 
deserted by every efficient servant, and the whole 
machinery of a complicated household left in their 
weak, inexperienced hands. In the country, you see 
a household perhaps made void some fine morning by 
Biddy's sudden departure, and nobody to make the 
bread, or cook the steak, or sweep the parlors, or do 
one of the complicated ofHces of a family, and no 
bakery, cook-shop, or laundry to turn to for alleviation. 
A lovely, refined home becomes in a few hours a howl- 
ing desolation ; and then ensues a long season of 
breakage, waste, distraction, as one wild Irish immi- 
grant after another introduces the style of Irish cot- 
tage life into an elegant dwelling. 

" Now suppose I grant to the Evening Post that 
woman ought to rest, to be kept in the garden of life, 
and all that, how is this to be done in a country where 
a state of things like this is the commonest of occur- 



Ii6 The CJiimncy-CoDur. 

rcnccs ? And is it any kindness or reverence to wo- 
man, to educate her for such an inevitable destiny by 
a Hie of complete i)hysical delicacy and incapacity? 
Many a woman who has been brought into these cruel 
circumstances would willingly exchange all her knowl- 
edge of (lerman and Italian, and all her graceful ac- 
complishments, for a good ])hysical development, and 
some respectable savoir /aire in ordinary life. 

*' Moreover, American matrons are overworked be- 
cause some unaccountable glamour leads them to con- 
fnuie to bring up their girls in the same inefhcient 
physical habits which resulted in so much misery to 
themselves. Housework as they are obliged to do it, 
untrained, untaught, exhausted, and in company with 
rude, dirty, unkempt foreigners, seems to them a deg- 
radation which they will spare to their daughters. 
The daughter goes on with her schools and accom- 
plishments, and leads in the family the life of an ele- 
gant little visitor during all those years when a young 
girl might be gradually develoi)ing and strengthening 
her muscles in healthy household work. It never 
occurs to her that she can or ought to fdl any of the 
domestic gaps into which her mother always steps ; 
and she comforts herself with the thought, ' I don't 
know how ; I can't; I haven't the strength. I caift 
sweep ; it blisters my hands. If J should stand at 
the ironing-table an hour, I should be ill for a week. 



Is Woman a Worker? 117 

As to cooking, I don't know anything about it.' And 
so, when the cook, or the chambermaid, or nurse, or 
all together, vacate the premises, it is the mamma who 
is successively cook, and chambermaid, and nurse ; 
and this is the reason why matrons fade and are over- 
worked. 

" Now, Mr. Rudolph, do you think a woman any 
less beautiful or interesting because she is a fully 
developed physical being, — because her muscles 
have been rounded and matured into strength, so that 
she can meet the inevitable emergencies of life with- 
out feeling them to be distressing hardships "i If there 
be a competent, well-trained servant to sweep and dust 
the parlor, and keep all the machinery of the house in 
motion, she may very properly select her work out of 
the family, in some form of benevolent helpfulness ; 
but when the inevitable evil hour comes, which is 
likely to come first or last in every American house- 
hold, is a woman any less an elegant woman because 
her love of neatness, order, and beauty leads her to 
make vigorous personal exertions to keep her own 
home undefiled ? For my part, I think a disorderly, 
ill-kept home, a sordid, uninviting table, has driven 
more husbands from domestic life than the unattract- 
iveness of any overworked woman. So long as a 
woman makes her home harmonious and orderly, so 
long as the hour of assembling around the family 



Il8 TJic CJiii)uicy-Conicr. 

table is something to be looked forward to as a com- 
fort and a refrosliment, a man cannot sec that the 
good house faiiy, who by sonic ma<;ic keeps every- 
thing so delightfully, has either a wrinkle or a gray 
hair. 

" r>esides," said I, " I must tell you, Rudolph, what 
you feUows of twenty-one a^re slow to believe ; and 
that is, that the kind of ideal paradise you propose in 
marriage, is, in the very nature of things, an impossi- 
bility, — that the familiarities of every-day life be- 
tween two people who keep house together must and 
will destroy it. Suppose you are married to C'ytherea 
herself, and the next week attacked with a rheumatic 
fever. If the tie between you is that of true and 
honest love, Cytherea will put on a gingham wrapper, 
and with her own sculptured hands wiring out the 
flannels which shall relieve your pains ; and she will 
be no true woman if she do not prefer to do this to 
employing any nurse that could be hired. True love 
ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life ; and 
homely services rendered for love's sake have in them 
a poetry that is immortal. 

" No true-hearted woman can fmd herself, in real, 
actual life, unskilled and unfit to minister to the 
wants and 'sorrows of those dearest to her, without a 
secret sense of degradation. The feeling of useless- 
ness is an extremely unpleasant one. Tom Hood, in 



Is Woman a Worker? 119 

a very liumorous paper, describes a most accom- 
plished schoolmistress, a teacher of all the arts and 
crafts which are supposed to make up fme gentle- 
women, who is stranded in a rude Clerman inn, witli 
her father writhing in the anguish of a severe attack 
of gastric inflammation. The helpless lady gazes on 
her sufifering parent, longing to help him, and think- 
ing over all her various little store of accomjjiish- 
ments, not one of which bear the remotest relation to 
the case. She could knit him a bead-jDurse, or make 
him a guard-chain, or work him a footstool, or festoon 
him with cut tissue-paper, or sketch his likeness, or 
crust him over with alum crystals, or stick him over 
with little rosettes of red and white wafers ; but none 
of these being applicable to his present case, she sits 
'gazing in resigned imbecility, till finally she desper- 
ately resolves to improvise him some gruel, and, after 
a laborious turn in the kitchen, — after burning her 
dress and blacking her fingers, — succeeds only in 
bringing him a bowl oi paste ! 

• " Not unlike this might be the feeling of many an 
elegant and accomplished woman, whose education 
has taught and practised her in everything fhac 
woman ought to know, except those identical ones 
which fit her for the care of a home, for the comfort 
of a sick-room ; and so I say again, that, whatever a 
woman may be in the way of beauty and elegance, 



120 The CJiwincy-Corncr. 

she must have the strength and skill of a practical 
worker^ or she is nothing. She is not simply to be the 
beautiful, — she is to make the beautiful, and preserve 
it ; and she who makes and she who keeps the beau- 
tiful must be able to work^ and know how to work. 
Whatever offices of life are performed by Women of 
culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated ; they 
cease to be mere servile toils, and become expres- 
sions of the ideas of superior beings. If a true lady 
makes even a plate of toast, in arranging 2, petit souper 
for her invalid friend, she does it as a lady should. 
She does not cut blundering and uneven slices ; she 
does not burn the edges j she does not deluge it with 
bad butter, and serve it cold; but she arranges and 
serves all with an artistic care, with a nicety and deli- 
cacy, which make it worth one's while to have a lady 
friend in sickness. 

" And I am glad to hear that Monsieur Blot is 
teaching classes of New York ladies that cooking is 
not a vulgar kitchen toil, to be left to blundering 
servants, but an elegant feminine accomplishment, 
better worth a woman's learning than crochet or 
embroidery ; and that a well-kept culinary apartment 
may be so inviting and orderly that no lady need feel 
her ladyhood compromised by participating in its 
pleasant toils. I am glad to know that his cooking 
academy is thronged with more scholars than he can 



Ts Woman a Worker? I2I 

accommodate, and from ladies in the best classes of 
society. 

" Moreover, I am glad to see that in New Bedford, 
recently, a public course of instruction in the art of 
bread-making has been commenced by a lady, and 
that classes of the most respectable young and mar- 
ried ladies in the place are attending them. 

"These are steps in the right direction, and show 
that our fair countrywomen, with the grand good- 
sense which is their leading characteristic, are re- 
solved to supply whatever in our national life is 
wanting. 

"I do not fear that women of such sense and 
energy will listen to the sophistries which would per- 
suade them that elegant imbecility and inefficiency 
are charms of cultivated womanhood or ingredients 
in the poetry of life. She alone can keep the poetry 
and beauty of married life who has this poetry in her 
soul ; who with energy and discretion can throw back 
and out of sight the sordid and disagreeable details 
which beset all human< living, and can keep in the 
foreground that which is agreeable ; who has enough 
knowledge of practical household matters to make 
unskilled and rude hands minister to her cultivated 
and refined tastes, and constitute her skilled brain 
the guide of unskilled hands. From such a home, 
with such a mistress, no sirens will seduce a man, 
6 



122 The CJiim7iey-Comer. 

even though the hair grow gray, and the merely 
physical charms of early days gradually pass away. 
The enchantment that was about her person alone in 
the days of courtship seems in the course of years to 
have interfused and penetrated the home which she 
has created, and which in every detail is only an 
expression of her personality. Her thoughts, her 
plans, her provident care, are everywhere ; and the 
home attracts and holds by a thousand ties the heart 
which before marriage was held by the woman alone." 



V. 

THE TRANSITION. 

"'nr^HE fact is, my dear," said my wife, "that you 
-fl- have thrown a stone into a congregation of 
blackbirds, in writing as you have of our family wars 
and wants. The response comes from all parts of the 
country, and the task of looking over and answering 
your letters becomes increasingly formidable. Every- 
body has something to say, — something to propose." 
" Give me a resume^' said I. 

" Well," said my wife, " here are three pages from 
an elderly gentleman, to the effect that women are 
not what they used to be, — that daughters are a 
great care and no help, — that girls have no health 
and no energy in practical life, — that the expense 
of maintaining a household is so great that young men 
are afraid to marry, — and that it costs more now per 
annum to dress one young woman than it used to 
cost to carry a whole family of sons through college. 
In short, the poor old gentleman is in a desperate 



124 The Chimney-CoTHer. 

state of mind, and is firmly of opinion that society 
is going to ruin by an express train." 

" Poor old fellow ! " said I, " the only comfort I can 
offer him is what I take myself, — that this sad world 
will last out our time at least. Now for the next." 

" The next is more concise and spicy," said my 
wife. " I will read it. 

" '■ Christopher Crowfidd^ Esq., 

'"•Sir, — If you want to know how American wo- 
men are to be brought back to family work, I can 
tell you a short method. Pay them as good wages 
for it as they can make in any other way. I get from 
seven to nine dollars a week in the shop where I 
work ; if I could make the same in any good family, 
I should have no objection to doing it. 

" ' Your obedient servant, 

" ' Letitia.' " 

" My correspondent Letitia does not tell me," said 
I, " how much of this seven or nine dollars she pays 
out for board and washing, fire and lights. If she 
worked in a good family at two or three dollars a 
week, it is easily demonstrable, that, at the present 
cost of these items, she \vould make as much clear 
profit as she now does at nine dollars for her shop- 
work. 



The Tf^ansition. 125 

"And there are two other things, moreover, which 
she does not consider : First, that, besides board, 
"washing, fuel, and Hghts, which she would have in 
a family, she would have also less unintermitted toil. 
Shop-work exacts its ten hours per diem ; and it 
makes no allowance for sickness or accident. 

" A good domestic in a good family finds many 
hours when she can feel free to attend to her own 
affairs. Her work consists of certain definite matters, 
which being done her time is her own ; and if she 
have skill and address in the management of her 
duties, she may secure many leisure hours. As 
houses are now built, and with the many labor-saving 
conveniences that are being introduced, the physical 
labor of housework is no more than a healthy woman 
really needs to keep her in health. In case, however, 
of those slight illnesses to which all are more or less 
liable, and which, if neglected, often lead to graver 
ones, the advantage is still on the side of domestic 
service. In the shop and factory, every hour of un- 
employed time is deducted ; an illness of a day or two 
is an appreciable loss of just so much money, while 
the expense of board is still going on. But in the 
family a good servant is always considered. When 
ill, she is carefully nursed as one of the family, has 
the family physician, and is subject 'to no deduction 
from her wages for loss of time. I have known more 



126 TJie CJiiituuy-Conicr. 

than one instance in \vhich a valued domestic has 
been sent, at her employer's expense, to the seaside 
or some other pleasant locality, for change of air, 
when her health has been run down. 

" In the second place, family work is more remu- 
nerative, even at a lower rate of wages, than shop 
or factory work, because it is better for the health. 
All sorts of sedentary employment, pursued by num- 
bers of persons together in one apartment, are more 
or less debilitating and unhealthy, through foul air 
and confinement. 

" A woman's liealth is her capital. In certain ways 
of work she obtains more income, but she spends on 
her capital to do it. In another way she may get less 
income, and yet increase her capital. A woman can- 
not w^ork at dress-making, tailoring, or any other sed- 
entary employment, ten hours a day, year in and out, 
without enfeebling her constitution, impairing her eye- 
sight, and bringing on a complication of complaints, 
but she can sweep, wash, cook, and do the varied 
duties of a well-ordered house with modern arrange- 
ments, and grow healthier every year. The times, 
in New England, when all women did housework a 
part of every day, were the times when all women 
were healthy. At present, the heritage of vigorous 
muscles, firm nerves, strong backs, and cheerful phys- 
ical life has gone from American women, and is taken 



The Transition. 12/ 

up by Irish women. A thrifty young man, I have 
lately heard of, married a rosy young Irish girl, quite 
to the horror of his mother and sisters, but defended 
himself by the following very conclusive logic : ' If 
I marry an American girl, I must have an Irish girl 
to take care of her ; and I cannot afford to support 
both.' 

" Besides all this, there is a third consideration, 
which I humbly commend to my friend Letitia. The 
turn of her note speaks her a girl of good common 
sense, with a faculty of hitting the nail square on the 
head ; and such a girl must see that nothing is more 
likely to fall out than that she will some day be mar- 
ried. Evidently, our fair friend is bom to rule ; and 
at this hour, doubtless, her foreordained throne and 
humble servant are somewhere awaiting her. 

" Now domestic service is all the while fitting a girl 
physically, mentally, and morally for her ultimate 
vocation and sphere, — to be a happy wife and to 
make a happy home. But factory work, shop work, 
and all employments of that sort, are in their nature 
essentially undomestic^ — entailing the constant ne- 
cessity of a boarding-house life, and of habits as dif- 
ferent as possible from the quiet routine of home. 
The girl who is ten hours on the strain of continued, 
unintermitted toil feels no inclination, when evening 
comes, to sit down and darn her stockings, or make 



128 The Chimney-Corner. 

over her dresses, or study any of those multifarious 
economies which turn a wardrobe to the best account. 
Her nervous system is flagging ; she craves company 
and excitement; and her dull, narrow room is de- 
serted for some place of amusement or gay street 
promenade. And who can blame her ? Let^any sen- 
sible woman, who has had experience of shop and 
factory life, recall to her mind the ways and manners 
in which young girls grow up who leave a father's 
roof for a crowded boarding-house, without any super- 
vision of matron or mother, and ask whether this is 
the best school for training young American wives 
and mothers. 

"Doubtless there are discreet and thoughtful 
women who, amid all these difficulties, do keep up 
thrifty, womanly habits, but they do it by an effort 
greater than the majority of girls are willing to make, 
and greater than they ought to make. To sew or 
read or study after ten hours of factory or shop work 
is a further drain on the nervous powers, which no 
woman can long endure without exhaustion. 

" When the time arrives that such a girl comes to a 
house of her own, she comes to it as unskilled in all 
household lore, with muscles as incapable of domestic 
labor, and nerves as sensitive, as if she had been lead- 
ing the most luxurious, do-nothing, fashionable life. 
How different would be her preparation, had the 



The Transition. 



129 



forming years of her life been sjDent in the labors of 
a family ! I know at this moment a lady at the head 
of a rich country establishment, filling her station in 
society with dignity and honor, who gained her do- 
mestic education in a kitchen in our vicinity. She 
was the daughter of a small farmer, and when the 
time came for her to be earning her living, her parents 
wisely thought it far better that she should gain it in a 
way which would at the same time establish her health 
and fit her for her own future home. In a cheerful, 
light, airy kitchen, which was kept so tidy always as 
to be an attractive sitting-room, she and another 
young country-girl were trained up in the best of 
domestic economies by a mistress who looked well 
to the ways of her household, till at length they mar- 
ried from the house with honor, and went to practise 
in homes of their own the lessons they had learned in 
the home of another. Formerly, in New England, 
such instances were not uncommon ; — would that 
they might become so again ! " 

" The fact is," said my wife, " the places which the 
daughters of American farmers used to occupy in our 
families are now taken by young girls from the fam- 
ilies of small farmers in Ireland. They are respect- 
able, tidy, healthy, and capable of being taught. A 
good mistress, who is reasonable and liberal in her 
treatment, is able to make them fixtures. They get 



130 TJic Cli'nuniY-Conicy. 

good wages, and have few expenses. They dress 
handsomely, have abundant leisure to take care of 
their .clothes and turn their wardrobes to the best 
account, and they very soon acquire skill in doing it 
equal to that displayed by any women of any country. 
They remit money continually to relatives in Ireland, 
and from time to time pay the passage of one and 
another to this country, — and whole families have 
thus been established in American life by the elTorts 
of one young girl. Now, for my part, I do not 
grudge my Irish fellow-citizens these advantages 
obtained by honest labor and good conduct ; they 
deserve all the good fortune thus accruing to them. 
But when I see sickly, nervous American women 
jostling and struggling in the few crowded avenues 
which are open to mere brain, I cannot help thinking 
how much better their lot would ha\'e been, with good 
strong bodies, steady nerves, healthy digestion, and 
the habit of looking any kind of work in the face, 
which used to be characteristic of American women 
generally, and of Yankee women in particular." 

"The matter becomes still graver," said I, "by the 
laws of descent. The woman who enfeebles her 
muscular system by sedentary occupation, and over- 
stimulates her brain and nervous system, M'hen she 
becomes a mother, perpetuates these evils to her 
offspring. Her children will be born feeble and deli- 



The Transition. 131 

cate, incapable of sustaining any severe strain of body 
or mind. The universal cry now about the ill health 
of young American girls is the fruit of some three 
generations of neglect of physical exercise and undue 
stimulus of brain and nerves. Young girls now are 
universally born delicate. The mo.st careful hygienic 
treatment during childhood, the strictest attention to 
diet, dress, and exercise, succeeds merely so far as to 
produce a girl who is healthy so long only as she 
does nothing. With the least strain, her delicate 
organism gives out, now here, now there. She can- 
not study without her eyes fail or she has headache, 
— she cannot get up her own muslins, or sweep a 
room, or pack a trunk, without bringing on a back- 
ache, — she goes to a concert or a lecture, and must 
lie by all the next day from the exertion. If she 
skates, she is sure to strain some muscle ; or if she 
falls and strikes her knee or hits her ankle, a blow 
that a healthy girl would forget in five minutes termi- 
nates in some mysterious lameness which confines 
our poor sibyl for months. 

"The young American girl of our times is a crea- 
ture who has not a particle of vitality to spare, — no 
reserved stock of force to draw upon in cases of 
family exigency. She is exquisitely strung, she is 
cultivated, she is refined ; but she is too nervous, too 
wiry, too sensitive, — she burns away too fast ; only 



132 The CJunincy-Conicr. 

the easiest of circumstances, the most Nvatchful of 
care and nursing, can" keep her within the limits of 
comfortable health ; and yet this is the creature who 
must undertake family life in a country where it is 
next to an absolute impossibility to have permanent 
domestics. Frequent change, occasional entire break- 
downs, must be the lot of the majority of housekeep- 
ers, — particularly those who do not live in cities." 

" In fact," said my wife, " we in America have so 
flir got out of the way of a womanhood that has any 
vigor of outline or opulence of physical proportions, 
that, when we see a woman made as a woman ought 
to be, she strikes us as a monster. Our willowy 
girls are afraid of nothing so much as growing stout ; 
and if a young lady begins to round into proportions 
like the women in Titian's and Giorgione's pictures, 
she is distressed above measure, and begins to make 
secret inquiries into reducing diet, and to cling des- 
perately to the strongest corset-lacing as her only 
hope. It would require one to be better educated 
than most of our girls are, tc^be willing to look like 
the Sistine Madonna or the Venus of Milo. 

" Once in a while our Italian opera-singers bring to 
our shores those glorious physiques which formed the 
inspiration of Italian painters ; and then American 
editors make coarse jokes about Barnum's fat woman, 
and avalanches, and pretend to be struck with terror 
at such dimensions. 



The Transit ioji. 133 

"We should be better instructed, and consider that 
Ital}^ does us a favor, in sending us specimens, not 
only of higher styles of musical art, but of a warmer, 
richer, and more abundant womanly life. The mag- 
nificent voice is only in keeping with the magnificent 
proportions of the singer. A voice which has no 
grate, no strain, which flows without effort, — which 
docs not labor eagerly up to a high note, but alights 
on it like a bird from above, there carelessly warbling 
and trilling, — a voice which then without effort sinks 
into broad, rich, sombre depths of soft, heavy chest- 
tone, — can come only with a physical nature at once 
strong, wide, and fine, — from a nature such as the 
sun of Italy ripens, as he does her golden grapes, 
filling it with the new wine of song.'' 

" Well," said I, " so much for our strictures on Miss 
Letitia's letter. What comes next ? " 

" Here is a correspondent who answers the ques- 
tion, 'What shall we do with her?' — apropos to the 
case of the distressed young woman which we con- 
sidered in our first chapter." 

" And what does he rex;ommend ? " 

" He tells us that he should advise us to make our 
distressed woman Marianne's housekeeper, and to 
send South for three or four contrabands for her to 
train, and, with great apparent complacency, seems 
to think that course will solve all similar cases of 
difficulty." 



134 ^Jie Chimney-Corner, 

"That's quite a man's view of the subject," said 
Jennie. " They think any woman who is n't particu- 
larly fitted to do anything else can keep house." 

" As if housekeeping were not the very highest 
craft and mystery of social life," said I. " I admit 
that our sex speak too unadvisedly on such topics, 
and, being well instructed by my household priest- 
esses, will humbly suggest the following ideas to my 
correspondent. 

" I St. A woman is not of course fit to be a house- 
keeper because she is a woman of good education and 
refinement. 

" 2d. If she were, a family with young children in 
it is not the proper place to establish a school for 
untaught contrabands, however desirable their train- 
ing may be. 

" A woman of good education and good common 
sense may learn to be a good housekeeper, as she 
learns any trade, by going into a good family and 
practising first one and then another branch of the 
business, till finally she shall acquire the comprehen- 
sive knowedge to direct all. 

" The next letter I will read. 

" ' Dear Mr. Crowfield, — Your papers relating 
to the domestic problem have touched upon a diffi- 
culty which threatens to become a matter of life and 
death with me. 



The Transition. 135 



<( < 



I am a young man, with good health, good 
courage, and good prospects. I have, for a young 
man, a fair income, and a prospect of its increase. 
But my business requires me to reside in a country 
town near a great manufacturing city. The demand 
for labor there has made such a drain on the female 
population of the vicinity, that it seems, for a great 
part of the time, impossible to keep any servants at 
all ; and what we can hire are of the poorest quality, 
and want exorbitant wages. My wife was a well- 
trained housekeeper, and knows perfectly all that 
pertains to the care of a family ; but she has three 
little children, and a delicate babe only a few weeks 
old ; and can any one woman do all that is needed 
for such a household ? Something must be trusted to 
servants ; and what is thus trusted brings such con- 
fusion and waste and dirt into our house, that the 
poor woman is constantly distraught between the 
disgust of having them and the utter impossibility of 
doing without them. 

" * Now it has been suggested that we remedy the 
trouble by paying higher wages ; but I find that for 
the very highest wages I secure only the most mis- 
erable service ; and yet, poor as it is, we are obliged 
to put up with it, because there is an amount of work 
to be done in our family that is absolutely beyond my 
wife's strength. 



136 TJic CJiiiiuuy-Corncr. 

" ' I see her health wearing away under these trials, 
her life made a burden ; I feel no power to help her ; 
and I ask you, ]\Ir. Crowfield, What are we to do ? 
What is to become of family life in this country ? 
" ' Yours truly, 

" ' A Young Family Man.' 

"My friend's letter," said I, "touches upon the very 
hinge of the diftlculty of domestic life with the present 
generation. 

" The real, vital difficulty, after all, in our American 
life is, that our country is so wide, so various, so 
abounding in the richest fields of enterprise, that in 
every direction the cry is of the plenteousness of the 
harvest and the few^ness of the laborers. In short, 
there really are not laborers enough to do the work of 
the country. 

" Since the war has thrown the whole South open 
to the competition of free labor, the demand for 
workers is doubled and trebled. Manufactories of all 
sorts are enlarging their borders, increasing their ma- 
chinery, and calling for more hands. Every article of 
living is demanded with an imperativeness and over an 
extent of territory which set at once additional thou- 
sands to the task of production. Instead of being 
easier to find hands to execute in all branohes of use- 
ful labor, it is likely to grow every year more difficult, 



The Transition. 137 

as new departments of manufacture and trade divide 
the Avorkers. The price of hibor, even now higher in 
this country than in any other, will rise still higher, 
and thus comi^licate still more the problem of domes- 
tic life. Jwen if a reasonable quota of intelligent 
women choose domestic service, the demand will be 
increasingly beyond the supply." 

"And what have you to say to this," said my wife, 
"seeing you cannot stop the prosperity of the coun- 
try ? " 

"Simply this, — that communities will be driven to 
organize, as they now do in lOuroiJC, to lessen the 
labors of individual families by having some of the 
present domestic tasks done out of the house. 

" In France, for example, no housekeeper counts 
cither washing, ironing, or bread-making as part of 
her domestic cares. All the family washing goes out 
to a laundry; and being attended to by those who 
make that department of labor a specialty, it comes 
home in refreshingly beautiful order. 

" We in America, though we pride ourselves on our 
Yankee thrift, are far behind the French in domestic 
economy. If all the families of a neighborhood 
should put together the sums they separately spend in 
buying or fitting up and keeping in repair tubs, boil- 
ers, and other accommodations for washing, all that 
is consumed or wasted in soap, starch, bluing, fuel, 



138 TJie C/iiffi/iij-Conicr. 

together with the wages and board of an extra servant, 
the aggregate would sutTice to fit up a neighborhood 
hiundry, where one or two capable women could do 
easily and well what ten or fifteen women now do 
painfully and ill, and to the confusion and derange- 
ment o'i all other family processes. ^ 

" The model laundries for the poor in London had 
facilities which would enable a woman to do both the 
washing and ironing of a small family in from two 
to three hours, and were so arranged that a very few 
women could with ease do the work of the neighbor- 
hood. 

" But in the absence of an establishment of this 
sort, the housekeepers of a country village might help 
themselves .very much by owning a mangle in com- 
mon, to which all the heavier parts of the ironing 
could be sent. American ingenuity has greatly im- 
proved the machinery of the mangle. It is no longer 
the heavy, cumbersome structure that it used to be in 
the Old World, but a compact, neat piece of appa- 
ratus, made in three or four diflerent sizes to suit dif- 
ferent-sized apartments. 

" Mr. H. F. Bond of Waltham, Massachusetts, now 
manufoctures these articles, and sends them to all 
parts of the country. The smallest of them does not 
take up much more room than a sewing-machine, can 
be turned by a boy of ten or twelve, and thus in the 



TJie Transition. 139 

course of an hour or two the heaviest and most fa- 
tiguing part of a family ironing may be accomplished. 

" I should certainly advise the ' Young Family Man' 
with a delicate wife and uncertain domestic help to 
fortify his kitchen with one of these fixtures. 

" But after all, I still say that the quarter to which I 
look for the solution of the American problem of do- 
mestic life is a wise use of the principle of associa- 
tion. 

" The future model village of New England, as I 
see it, shall have for the use of its inhabitants not 
merely a town lyceum-hall and a town library, but a 
town laundry, fitted up with , conveniences such as no 
private house can afford, and paying a price to the 
operators which will enable them to command an 
excellence of work such as private families seldom 
realize. It will also have a town bakery, where the 
best of family bread, white, brown, and of all grains, 
shall be compounded ; and lastly a town cook-shoi^, 
where soup and meats may be bought, ready for the 
table. Those of us who have kept house abroad 
remember the ease with which our foreign establish- 
ments were carried on. A suite of elegant apartments, 
a courier, and one female servant, were the foundation 
of domestic life. Our courier boarded us at a mod- 
erate expense, and the servant took care of our rooms. 
Punctually to the dinner-hour every day, our dinner 



140 The Chimney-Comer. 

came in on the head of a porter from a neighboring 
cook-shop. A large chest Hned with tin, and kept 
warm by a tiny charcoal stove in the centre, being 
deposited in an ante-room, from it came forth, first, 
soup, then fish, then roast of various names, and lastly 
pastry and confections, — far more courses than any 
reasonable Christian needs to keep him in healthy 
condition; and dinner being over, our box with its 
debris went out of the house, leaving a clear field, 

" Now I pu: it to the distressed ' Young Family 
Man ' whether these three institutions of a bakery, a 
cook-shop, and a laundry, in the village where he lives, 
would not virtually annihilate his household cares, and 
restore peace and comfort to his now distracted 
family. 

" There really is no more reason why every family 
should make its own bread than its own butter, — 
why every family should do its own washing and iron- 
ing than its own tailoring or mantua-making. In 
France, where certainly the arts of economy are well 
studied, there is some specialty for many domestic 
needs for which we keep servants. The "beautiful in- 
laid floors are kept waxed and glossy by a professional 
gentleman who wears a brush on his foot-sole, skates 
gracefully over the surface, and, leaving all right, de- 
parteth. Many families, each paying a small sum, 
keep this servant in common. 



The Transition. 141 

" Now if ever there was a community which needed 
to study the art of Hving, it is our American one ; for 
at present, domestic life is so wearing and so oppres- 
sive as seriously to affect health and happiness. 
Whatever has been done abroad in the way of comfort 
and convenience can be done here ; and the first 
neighborhood that shall set the example of dividing 
the tasks and burdens of life by the judicious use of 
the principle of association will initiate a most impor- 
tant step in the way of national happiness and pros- 
perity. 

" My solution, then, of the domestic problem may 
be formulized as follows : — 

" I St. That women make self-helpfulness and family 
helpfulness fashionable, and every woman use her 
muscles daily in enough household work to give her 
a good digestion. 

" 2d. That the situation of a domestic be made so 
respectable and respected that well-educated American 
women shall be induced to take it as a training-school 
for their future family life. 

" 3d. That families by association lighten the multi- 
farious labors of the domestic sphere. 
- " All of which I humbly submit to the good sense 
and enterprise of American readers and workers." 



VL 



BODILY RELIGION : A SERMON ON GOOD 
HEALTH. 

ONE of our recent writers has said, that ''good 
health is physical religion " ; and it is a saying- 
NYorthy to be printed in golden letters. But good 
health being physical religion, it fully shares that 
indifference with which the human race regards things 
confessedly the most important. The neglect of the 
soul is the trite theme of all religious teachers ; and, 
next to their souls, there is nothing that people neg- 
lect so much as their bodies. Every person ought to 
be perfectly healthy, just as everybody ought to be 
perfectly religious ; but, in point of fact, the greater 
part of mankind are so far from perfect moral or phys- 
ical religion that they cannot even form a conception 
of the blessing beyond them. 

The mass of good, well-meaning Christians are not 
yet advanced enough to guess at the change which a 
perfect fidelity to Christ's spirit and precepts would 
produce in them. And the majority of people who 



Bodily Religioit. 1 43 

call themselves well, because they are not, at present, 
upon any particular doctor's list, arc not within sight 
of what perfect health would be. That fulness of life, 
that vigorous tone, and that elastic cheerfulness, which 
make the mere fact of existence a luxury, that supple- 
ness which carries one like a well-built boat over 
every wave of unfavorable chance, — these are attri- 
butes of the perfect health seldom enjoyed. We see 
them in young children, in animals, and now and 
then, but rarely, in some adult human being, who has 
preserved intact the religion of the body through 
all opposing influences. Perfect health supposes 
not a state of mere quiescence, but of positive 
enjoyment in living. See that httle fellow, as his 
nurse turns him out in the morning, fresh from his 
bath, his hair newly curled, and his cheeks polished 
like apples. Every step is a spring or a dance ; he 
runs, he laughs, he shouts, his face breaks into a thou- 
sand dimpling smiles at a word. His breakfast of 
plain bread and milk is swallowed with an eager and 
incredible delight, — it is so good that he stops to 
laugh or thump the table now and then in expression 
of his ecstasy. All day long he runs and frisks and 
jjlays ; and when at night the little head seeks the 
pillow, down go the eye-curtains, and sleep comes 
without a dream. In the morning his first note is a 
laugh and a crow, as he sits up in his crib and tries 



144 T^^^^ CJiinincy-Coyjicr. 

to pull papa's eyes open with bis fat fingers. He is 
an embodied joy, — he is sunshine and music and 
laugl)l€r for all the house. With what a magnificent 
generosity does the Author of life endow a little mor- 
tal pilgrim in giving him at the outset of his career 
such a body as this ! How miserable it is to look for- 
ward twenty years, when the same child, now grown 
a man, wakes in the morning with a dull, hea\y head, 
the consequence of smoking and studying till twelve 
or one the night before ; when he rises languidly to a 
late breakfast, and turns from this, and tries that, — 
wants a devilled bone, or a cutlet with Worcestershire 
sauce, to make eating possible ; and then, with slow 
and plodding step, finds his way to his office and his 
books. Verily the shades of the prison-house gather 
round the growing boy ; for, surely, no one will deny 
that life often begins with health little less perfect 
than that of the angels. 

But the man who habitually wakes sodden, head- 
achy, and a little stupid, and who needs a cup of 
strong coffee and various stimulating condiments to 
coax his bodily system into something like fair work- 
ing order, does not suppose he is out of health. He 
says, " Very well, I thank you," to your inquiries, — - 
merely because he has entirely forgotten what good 
health is. He is well, not because of any particular 
pleasure in physical existence, but well simply because 



Bodily Religion. 145 

he is not a subject for prescriptions. Yet there is no 
store of vitality, no buoyancy, no superabundant vigor, 
to resist the strain and pressure to which life puts 
him. A checked perspiration, a draught of air ill- 
timed, a crisis of perplexing business or care, and he 
is down with a bilious attack, or an influenza, and 
subject to doctors' orders for an indefinite period. 
And if the case be so with men, how is it with wo 
men ? How many women have at maturity the keen 
appetite, the joyous love of life and motion, the elas- 
ticity and sense of physical delight in existence, that 
little children have t How many have any superabun- 
dance of vitality with which to meet the wear and 
strain of life ? And yet they call themselves well. 

But is it possible, in maturity, to have the joyful 
fulness of the life of childhood.? Experience has 
shown that the delicious freshness of this dawning 
hour may be preserved even to mid-day, and may be 
brought "back and restored after it has been for years 
a stranger. Nature, though a severe disciplinarian, 
is still, in many respects, most patient and easy to 
be entreated, and meets any repentant movement of 
her prodigal children with wonderful condescension. 
Take Bulwer's account of the .first few weeks of his 
sojourn at Malvern, and you will read, in very elegant 
English, the story of an experience of pleasure which 
has surprised and delighted many a patient at a water- 
7 J 



146 TJic CJii}ni:cY-Co)iu-y. 

cure. The return to the great primitive elements of 
heaUh — water, air, and simple food, with a rei;ular 
system of exercise — has brought to many a jaded, 
V. ^:i:y, worn-down human being the elastic spirits, the 
simple, eager appetite, the sound sleep, <>i a little 
child, llence, the rude huts and chalets of the peas- 
ant Priessnitz were crowded with battered dukes and 
princesses, and notables of every degree, who came 
from the hot, enervating luxury which had drained 
them of existence to find a keener jileasure in peas- 
ants' bread under peasants' roofs than in soft raiment 
and palaces. No arts of French cookery can jiossibly 
make anything taste so well to a feeble and jxilleil 
appetite as plain brown bread and milk taste to a 
lumgry water-cure patient, fresh from bath and exer- 
cise. 

If the water-cure had done nothing more than es- 
tablish the fact that the glow and joyousness of early 
life are things which may be restored after having 
been once wasted, it would have done a good work. 
For if Nature is so forgiving to those who have once 
lost or have squandered her treasures, what may not 
be hoped for us if we can learn the art of never losing 
the lirst health of childhood ? And though with us, 
who have passed to maturity, it may be too late for 
the blessing, cannot something be done for the chil- 
dren who are yet to come after us 1 



Bodily Religion. 147 

Why is the first heahh of childhood lost ? Is it not 
the answer, that childhood is the only period of life 
in which bodily health is made a prominent object ? 
Take our pretty boy, vvitli checks lil^e apples, who 
started in life with a hop, skip, and dance, — to whom 
laughter was like breathing, and who was enraptured 
with plain bread and milk, — how did he grow into 
the man who wakes so languid and dull, who wants 
strong coffee and Worcestershire sauce to make his 
breakfast go down ? When and where did he drop 
the invaluable talisman that once made everything 
look brighter and taste better to him, however rude 
and simple, than now do the most elaborate combi- 
nations? What is the boy's history? Why, for the 
first seven years of his life his body is made of some 
account. It is watched, cared for, dieted, disciplined, 
fed with fresh air, and left to grow and develop like 
a thrifty plant. But from the time school education 
begins, the body is steadily ignored, and left to take 
care of itself. 

The boy is made to sit six hours a day in a close, 
hot room, breathing impure air, putting the brain and 
the nervous system upon a constant strain, w^hile the 
muscular system is repressed to an unnatural quiet. 
During the six hours, perhaps twenty minutes arc 
allowed for all that play of the muscles which, up to 
this time, has been the constant habit of his life. 



14S TJic C/iiifi/uy-CorfitT. 

After this he is sent home with books, shxte, and 
lessons to occupy an hour or two more in preparing 
for tlie next day. In tl\e whole o'i this time there is 
no kind o{ etTort to train the physical system by ap- 
propriate exercise. Somethiui; of the sort .was at- 
tempted years ago in the infant schools, but soon 
given up ; and now, from the time study first begins, 
tlie muscles are ignored in all jirimary schools. Owe 
of the first results is the loss of that animal vigor 
which formerly made the boy love motion for its own 
sake. Kven in his leisure hours he no longer leaps 
and runs as he used to ; he learns to sit still, and by 
and by sitting and lounging come to be the habit, and 
vigorous motion the exception, for most of the hours 
of the day. The education thus begun goes on from 
primary to high school, from high school to college, 
from college through professional studies of law, med- 
icine, or theology, with this steady contempt for the 
body, with no provision for its culture, training, or 
development, but rather a direct and evident provision 
for its deterioration and decay. 

The want of suitable ventilation in school-rooms, 
recitation-rooms, lecture-rooms, oihces, court-rooms, 
conference-rooms, and vestries, where young students 
of law, medicine, and theology acquire their earlier 
practice, is something simply appalling. Of itself it 
would answer for men the question, why so many 



Bodily Religion. 149 

thousand glad, active children come to a middle life 
without joy, — a life whose best estate is a sort of 
slow, plodding endurance. The despite and hatred 
which most men seem to feel for God's gift of fresh 
air, and their resolution to breathe as little of it as 
]jossible, could only come from a long course of edu- 
cation, in which they have been accustomed to live 
without it. Let any one notice tlie conduct of our 
American people travelling in railroad cars. We will 
suppose that about half of them are what might be 
called well-educated people, who have learned in 
books, or otherwise, that the air breathed from the 
lungs is laden with impurities, — that it is noxious 
and poisonous ; and yet, travel with these people half 
a day, and you would suppose from their actions that 
they considered the external air as a poison created 
expressly to injure them, and that the only course of 
safety lay in keeping the cars hermetically scaled, and 
Ijreathing over and over the vapor from each others' 
lungs. If a person in despair at the intolerable foul- 
ness raises a window, what frowns from all the neigh- 
boring seats, especially from great rough-coated men, 
wlio always seem the first to be apprehensive ! The 
request to "put down that window" is almost sure to 
follow a moment or two of fresh air. In vain have 
rows of ventilators been put in the tops of some of the 
cars, for conductors and passengers are both of one 



150. TJie CJiiinncy-Corner. 

mind, that these ventilators are inlets of danger, and 
must be kept carefully closed. 

Railroad travelling in America is systematically, 
and one would think carefully, arranged so as to vio- 
late every possible law of health. The 0I4 rule to 
keep the head cool and the feet warm is precisely 
reversed. A red-hot stove heats the upper stratum 
of air to oppression, while a stream of cold air is con- 
stantly circulating about the lower extremities. The 
most indigestible and unhealthy substances conceiv- 
able are generally sold in the cars or at way-stations 
for the confusion and distress of the stomach. Rarely 
can a traveller obtain so innocent a thing as a plain 
good sandwich of bread and meat, while pie, cake, 
doughnuts, and all other culinary atrocities, are al- 
most forced upon him at every stopping-place. In 
France, England, and Germany the railroad cars are 
perfectly ventilated ; the feet are kept warm by flat 
cases filled with hot water and covered with carpet, 
and answering the double purpose of warming the feet 
and diffusing an agreeable temperature through the 
car, without burning away the vitality of the air j 
while the arrangements at the refreshment-rooms pro- 
vide for the passenger as wholesome and well-served a 
meal of healthy, nutritious food as could be obtained 
in any home circle. 

What are we to infer concerning the home habits 



Bodily Religion. 151 

of a nation of men who so resignedly allow their 
bodies to be poisoned and maltreated in travelling 
over such an extent of territory as is covered by our 
railroad lines ? Does it not show that foul air and 
improper food are too much matters of course to ex- 
cite attention? As a writer in "The Nation" has 
lately remarked, it is simply and only because the 
American nation like to have unventilated cars, and 
to be fed on pie and coffee at stopping-places, that 
nothing better is known to our travellers ; if there 
were any marked dislike of such a state of things on 
the part of the people, it would not exist. We have 
wealth enough, and enterprise enough, and ingenuity 
enough, in our American nation, to compass with 
wonderful rapidity any end that really seems to us 
desirable. An army was improvised when an army 
was wanted, — and an army more perfectly equipped, 
more bountifully fed,, than so great a body of men 
ever was before. Hospitals, Sanitary Commissions, 
and Christian Commissions all arose out of the simple 
conviction of the American people that they must 
arise. If the American people were equally con- 
vinced that foul air was a poison, — that to have cold 
feet and hot heads was to invite an attack of illness, 
— that maple- sugar, pop-corn, peppermint candy, pie, 
doughnuts, and peanuts are not diet for reasonable 
beings, — they would have railroad accommodations 
very different from those now in existence. 



152 The Chimney-Corner. 

We have spoken of the foul air of court-rooms. 
What better illustration could be given of the utter 
contempt with which the laws of bodily health are 
treated, than the condition of these places? Our 
lawyers are our highly educated men. They have 
been through high-school and college training, they 
have learned the properties of oxygen, nitrogen, and 
carbonic-acid gas, and have seen a mouse die under 
an exhausted receiver, and of course they know that 
foul, unventilated rooms are bad for the health j and 
yet generation after generation of men so taught and 
trained will spend the greater part of their lives in 
rooms notorious for their close and impure air, with- 
out so much as an attempt to remedy the evil. A 
well-ventilated court-room is a four-leaved clover 
among court-rooms. Young men are constantly los- 
ing their health at the bar ; lung diseases, dyspepsia, 
follow them up, gradually sapping their vitality. 
Some of the brightest ornaments of the profession 
have actually fallen dead as they stood pleading, — 
victims of the fearful pressure of poisonous and 
heated air upon the excited brain. The deaths of 
Salmon P. Chase of Portland, uncle of our present 
Chief Justice, and of Ezekiel Webster, the brother 
of our great statesman, are memorable examples of 
the calamitous effects of the errors dwelt upon ; and 
yet, strange to say, nothing efficient is done to mend 



Bodily Religion. 153 

these errors, and give the body an equal chance with 
the mind in the pressure of the world's affairs. 

But churches, lecture-rooms, and vestries, and all 
buildings devoted especially to the good of the soul, 
are equally wdtness of the mind's disdain of the body's 
needs, and the body's consequent revenge upon the 
soul. In how many of these places has the question 
of a thorough provision of fresh air been even con- 
sidered? People would never think of bringing a 
thousand persons into a desert place, and keeping 
them there, without making preparations to feed them. 
Bread and bufler, potatoes and meat, must plainly be 
found for them ; but a thousand human beings are 
put into a building to remain a given number of 
hours, and no one asks the question whether means 
exist for giving each one the quantum of fresh air 
needed for his circulation, and these thousand victims 
will consent to be slowly poisoned, gasping, sweating, 
getting red in the face, with confused and sleepy 
brains, while a minister with a yet redder face and a 
more oppressed brain struggles and wrestles, through 
the hot, seething vapors, to make clear to them the 
mysteries of faith. How many churches are there 
that for six or eight months in the year are never 
ventilated at all, except by the accidental opening of 
doors ? The foul air generated by one congregation 
is locked up by the sexton for the use of the next 



154 '^^^^ CJi'un)ic)'-Coriicr. 

assembly ; and so gathers and gathers from week to 
week, and month to month, while devout persons 
upbraid themselves, and are ready to tear their hair, 
because they always feel stupid and sleepy in church. 
The proper ventilation of their churches ^nd vestries 
would remove that spiritual deadness of which their 
prayers and hymns complain. A man hoeing his 
corn out on a breezy hillside is bright and alert, his 
mind works clearly, and he feels interested in religion, 
and thinks of many a thing that might be said at the 
prayer-meeting at night. But at night, when he sits 
down in a little room where the air ^eks with the 
vapor of his neighbor's breatli and the smoke of 
kerosene lamps, he finds himself suddenly dull and 
drowsy, — without emotion, without thought, without 
feeling, — and he rises and reproaches himself for 
this state of things. He calls upon his soul and all 
that is within him to bless the Lord ; but the indig- 
nant body, abused, insulted, ignored, takes the soul 
by the throat, and says, "If you won't let 7nc have a 
good time, neither shall you." Revivals of religion, 
with ministers and with those people whose moral or- 
ganization leads them to take most interest in them, 
often end in periods of bodily ill-health and depres- 
sion. But is there any need of this ? Suppose that 
a revival of religion required, as a formula, that all 
the members of a given congregation should daily 



Bodily Religion. 155 

take a minute dose of arsenic in concert, — we should 
not be surprised after a while to hear of various ill 
effects therefrom ; and, as vestries and lecture-rooms 
are now arranged, a daily prayer-meeting is often 
nothing more nor less than a number of persons 
spending half an hour a day breathing poison from 
each other's lungs. There is not only no need of 
this, but, on the contrary, a good supply of pure air 
would make the daily prayer-meeting far more enjoya- 
ble. The body, if allowed the slighest degree of fair 
play, so far from being a contumacious infidel and 
opposer, becomes a very fair Christian helper, and, 
instead of throttling the soul, gives it wings to rise to 
celestial regions. 

This branch of our subject w^e will quit with one 
significant anecdote. A certain rural church was 
somewhat famous for its picturesque Gothic archi- 
tecture, and equally famous for its sleepy atmosphere, 
the rules of Gothic symmetry requiring very small 
windows, which could be only partially opened. 
Everybody was affected alike in this church ; minister 
and people complained that it was like the enchanted 
ground in the Pilgrim's Progress. Do what they 
would, sleep was ever at their elbows ; the blue, red, 
and green of the painted windows melted into a 
rainbow dimness of hazy confusion ; and ere they 
were aware, they were off on a cloud to the land of 
dreams. 



156 The CJiirducy-Corncr. 

An energetic sister in the church suggested the 
inquiry, whether it was ever ventilated, and discov- 
ered that it was regularly locked up at the close of 
service, and remained so till opened for the next 
week. She suggested the inquiry, whether giving the 
church a thorough airing on Saturday would not 
improve the Sunday services ; but nobody acted on 
her suggestion. Finally, she borrowed the sexton's 
key one Saturday night, and went into the church and 
opened all the windows herself, and let them remain 
so for the night. The next day everybody remarked 
the improved comfort of the church, and wondered 
what had produced the change. Nevertheless, when 
it was discovered, it was not deemed a matter of 
enough importance to call for an order on the sexton 
to perpetuate the improvement. 

The ventilation of private dwellings in this country 
is such as might be expected from that entire indiffer- 
ence to the laws of health manifested in public estab- 
lishments. Let a person travel in private conveyance 
up through the valley of the Connecticut, and stop for 
a night at the taverns which he will usually find at 
the end of each day's stage. The bed-chamber into 
which he will be ushered will be the concentration ot 
all forms of bad air. The house is redolent of the 
vegetables in the cellar, — cabbages, turnips, and 
potatoes j and this fragrance is conhned and retained 



Bodily Religio7i. 1 57 

by the custom of closing the window-blinds and drop- 
ping the inside curtains, so that neither air nor sun- 
shine enters in to purify. Add to this the strong 
odor of a new feather-bed and pillows, and you have 
a combination of perfumes most appalling to a deli- 
cate sense. Yet travellers take possession of these 
rooms, sleep in them all niglit without raising the 
window or opening the blinds, and leave them to be 
shut up for other travellers. 

The spare chamber of many dwellings seems to be 
an hermetically closed box, opened only twice a year, 
for spring and fall cleaning; but for the rest of the 
time closed to the sun and the air of heaven. Thrifty 
country housekeepers often adopt the custom of mak- 
ing their beds on the instant after they arc left, witli- 
out airing the sheets and mattresses ; and a bed so 
made gradually becomes permeated with the insensi- 
ble emanations of the human body, so as to be a 
steady corrupter of the atmosphere. 

In the winter, the windows are calked and listed, 
the throat of the chimney built up with a tight brick 
wall, and a close stove is introduced to help burn out 
the vitality of the air. In a sitting-room like this, 
from five to ten persons will spend about eight months 
of the year, with no other ventilation than that gained 
by the casual opening and shutting of doors. Is it 
any wonder that consumption every year sweeps away 



158 The Chiinncy-Corncr. 

its thousands ? — that people are suffering constant 
chronic ailments, — neuralgia, nervous dyspepsia, and 
all the host of indefinite bad feelings that rob life of 
sweetness and flower and bloom ? 

A recent writer raises the inquiry, whether the com- 
munity would not gain in health by the demolition of 
all dwelling-houses. That is, he suggests the ques- 
tion, whether the evils from foul air are not so great 
and so constant, that they countervail the advantages 
of shelter. Consumptive patients far gone have been 
known to be cured by long journeys, which have re- 
quired them to be day and night in the open air. 
Sleep under the open heaven, even though the person 
be exposed to the various accidents of weather, has 
often proved a miraculous restorer after everything 
else had failed. But surely, if simple fresh air is so 
healing and preserving a thing, some means might be 
found to keep the air in a house just as pure and vig- 
orous as it is outside. 

An article in the May number of " Harpers' Maga- 
zine " presents drawings of a very simple arrangement 
by which any house can be made thoroughly self-ven- 
tilating. Ventilation, as this article shows, consists 
in two things, — a perfect and certain expulsion from 
the dwelling of all foul air breathed from the lungs or 
arising from any other cause, and the constant supply 
of pure air. 



Bodily Religion. 159 

One source of foul air cannot be too much guarded 
against, — we mean imperfect gas-pipes. A want of 
thoroughness in execution is the sin of our American 
artisans, and very few gas-fixtures are so thoroughly- 
made that more or less gas does not escape and min- 
gle with the air of the dwelling. There are parlors 
where plants cannot be made to live, because the gas 
kills them ; and yet their occupants do not seem to 
reflect that an air in which a plant cannot live must 
be dangerous for a human being. The very clemency 
and long-suffering of Nature to those who persistently 
violate her laws is one great cause why men are, phys- 
ically speaking, such sinners as they are. If foul air 
poisoned at once and completely, we should have 
well-ventilated houses, whatever else we failed to have. 
But because people can go on for weeks, months, and 
years, breathing poisons, and slowly and imperceptibly 
lowering the tone of their vital powers, and yet be 
what they call " pretty well, I thank you," sermons on 
ventilation and fresh air go by them as an idle song. 
" I don't see but we are well enough, and we never 
took much pains about these things. There 's air 
enough gets into houses, of course. What with doors 
opening and windows occasionally lifted, the air of 
houses is generally good enough" ; — and so the mat- 
ter is dismissed. 

One of Heaven's great hygienic teachers is now 



i6o TJic C/iinnhy-Coificr. 

abroad in the world, giving lessons on health to the 
children of men. The cholera is like the angel 
whom God threatened to send as leader to the rebel- 
lious Israelites. '' lleware of him, obey his voice, and 
provoke him not ; for he will not pardon your trans- 
gressions." The advent of this tearful messenger 
seems really to be made necessary by the contempt 
with which men treat the physical laws of their being. 
"What else could have purified the dark places of New 
York ? What a wiping-up and reforming and cleans- 
ing is going before him through the country ! At last 
we fmd that Nature is in earnest, and that her laws 
cannot be always ignored with impunity. Poisoned 
air is recognized at last as an evil, — even although 
the poison cannot be weighed, measured, or tasted ; 
and if all the precautions that men are now willing to 
take could be made perpetual, the alarm would be a 
blessing to the world. 

Like the principles of spiritual religion, the princi- 
ples of physical religion are few and easy to be under- 
stood. An old medical apothegm personifies the 
hygienic forces as the l^octors Air, Diet, l^xercise, 
and Quiet ; and these four will be found, on reflec- 
tion, to cover the whole ground of what is reciuired to 
preserve human health. A human being whose lungs 
have always been nourished by pure air, whose stom- 
ach has been fed only by appropriate ioO(], whose 



Bodily Religion. 16 1 

muscles have been systematically trained by appropri- 
ate exercises, and whose mind is kept trancjuil by 
faith in (Uxl and a g<!*od conscience, has perfect phys- 
ical reliyjo?i. There is a line where physical religion 
must necessarily overlap spiritual religion and rest 
upon it. No human being can be assured of perfect 
health, tlirough all the strain and wear and tear of 
such cares and such perplexities as life brings, without 
the rest oi faith in God. An unsubmissive, unconfid- 
ing, unresigned soul will make vain the best hygienic 
treatment; and, on the contrary, the most saintly re- 
ligious resolution and purpose may be defeated and 
vitiated by an habitual ignorance and disregard of the 
laws. of the physical system. 

Perfect spiritual religion cannot exist without perfect 
physical religion. Every flaw and defect in the bodily 
system is just so much taken from the spiritual vital- 
ity : we are commanded to glorify God, not simply in 
our spirits, but in our bodies and spirits. The only 
example of perfect manhood the world ever saw im- 
presses us more than anything else by an atmosphere 
of perfect healthiness. There is a calmness, a steadi- 
ness, in the character of Jesus, a naturalness in his 
evolution of the subUmest truths under the strain of 
the most aljsorbing and intense excitement, that could 
come only from the ojte perfectly trained and devel- 
oped body, bearing as a pure and sacred shrine the 

K 



1 62 The Chbnncy-Corner. 

One Perfect Spirit. Jesus of Nazareth, journeying on 
foot from city to city, always calm yet always fervent, 
always steady yet glowing with a white heat of sacred 
enthusiasm, able to walk and teach all day and after- 
wards to continue in prayer all night, with unshaken 
nerves, sedately patient, serenely reticent, perfectly 
self-controlled, walked the earth, the only man that 
perfectly glorified God in his body no less than in his 
spirit. It is worthy of remark, that in choosing his 
disciples he chose plain men from the laboring classes, 
v;ho had lived the most obediently to the simple, 
unperverted laws of nature. He chose men of good 
and pure bodies, — simple, natural, childlike, healthy 
men, — and baptized their souls with the inspiration 
of the Holy Spirit. 

The hygienic bearings of the New Testament have 
never been sufficiently understood. The basis of 
them lies in the solemn declaration, that our bodies 
are to be temples of the Holy Spirit, and that all 
abuse of them is of the nature of sacrilege. Rever- 
ence for the physical system, as the outward shrine 
and temple of the spiritual, is the peculiarity of the 
Christian religion. The doctrine of the resurrection 
of the body, and its physical immortality, sets the last 
crown of honor upon it. That bodily system which 
God declared worthy to be gathered back from the 
dust of the grave, and re-created, as the soul's immor- 



Bodily Religion. 163 

tal companion, must necessarily be dear and precious 
in the eyes of its Creator, The one passage in the 
New Testament in which it is spoken of disparagingly 
is where Paul contrasts it with the brighter glory of 
what is to come : " He shall change our vile bodies, 
that they may be fashioned like his glorious body." 
From this passage has come abundance of reviling of 
the physical system. Memoirs of good men are full 
of abuse of it, as the clog, the load, the burden, the 
chain. It is spoken of as pollution, as corruption, — 
in short, one would think that the Creator had imi- 
tated the cruelty of some Oriental despots who have 
been known to chain a festering corpse to a living 
body. Accordingly, the memoirs of these pious men 
are also mournful records of slow suicide, wrought by 
the persistent neglect of the most necessary and im- 
portant laws of the bodily system ; and the body, out- 
raged and down-trodden, has turned traitor to the 
soul, and played the adversary with fearful power. 
Who can tell the countless temptations to evil which 
flow in from a neglected, disordered, deranged ner- 
vous system, — temptations to anger, to irritabilit}-, to 
selfishness, to every kind of sin of appetite and pas- 
sion ? No wonder that the poor soul longs for the 
hour of release from such a companion. 

But that human body which God declares expressly 
was made to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, which 



164 ^'^''^' CJi'uiiucy-Conur. 

lie considers worthy to bo perpetuated by a resurrec- 
tion and an immortal existence, cannot be intended 
to be a clog and a hindrance to spiritual advance- 
ment. A perfect body, working in perfect tune and 
lime, would open glimpses of'happiness to the soul 
approaching the joys wc hope for in heaven. It is 
only through the images of things which our bodily 
senses have taught us, that we can form any concep- 
tion of that future bliss ; and the more perfect these 
senses, the more perfect our conceptions must be. 

The conclusion of the whole matter, and the prac- 
tical application of this sermon, is: — First, that all 
men set themselves to form the idea of what perfect 
health is, and resolve to realize it for themselves and 
their children. Second, that with a view to this they 
study the religion of the body, in such sim[)le and, 
popular treatises as those of George Combe, Dr. Die 
Lewis, and others, and with simple and honest hearts 
practise what they there learn. Third, that the train- 
ing of the bodily system should form a regular part 
of our common-school education, — every common 
school being provided with a welbinstructed teacher 
of gymnastics ; and the growth and develojiment of 
each pupil's body being as much noticed and marked 
as is now the growth of his mind. The same course 
should be continued and enlarged in colleges and 
female seminaries, which shoukl have professors of 



Bodily Religion. 165 

liy^icnc appointed to give tIiorrni;;Ii instruction con- 
cerning; the laws of health. 

And wiien this is all done, we may hrjpc that 
crooked spines, pimpled faces, s.dlow complexions, 
stooping shoulders, and all other si;;ns indicating an 
undevelofjed physical vitality, will, in the course of a 
few generations, flisappear from the earth, and men 
will have bodies which will glorify 0;d, their great 
Architect. 

The soul of man has got as far as it can without 
the body. Religion herself stoijs and looks back, 
waiting for the body to -overtake her. The soul's 
great enemy and hindrance can be made her best 
friend and most powerful help ; and it is high time 
that this era were begun. We old sinners, who have 
lived carelessly, and almost sjjent our day of grace, 
may not gain much of its good; but the children, — 
shall there not be a more perfect day for them ? 
Shall therci not come a day when the little child, 
whom Christ set forth to his disciples as the type of 
the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, shall be the 
ty[)e no less of our physical than our spiritual advance- 
ment, — when men and women shall arise, keeping 
through long and hapjjy lives the simple, unperverted 
appetites, the joyous freshness of sj^irit, the keen 
delight in mere existence, the dreamless sleep and 
happy waking of early childhood ? 



VII. 

HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COM- 
PANY ? 

" ^ I ^HE fact is," said Marianne, " we must have a 
■^ party. Bob don't like to hear of it, but it 
must come. We are in debt to everybody : we have 
been invited everywhere, and never had anything like 
a party since we were married, and it won't do." 

" For my part, I hate parties," said Bob. " They 
put your house all out of order, give all the women a 
sick-headache, and all the men an indigestion ; you 
never see anybody to any purpose ; the girls look 
bewitched, and the women answer you at cross-pur- 
poses, and call you by the name of your next-door 
neighbor, in their agitation of mind. We stay out 
beyond our usual bedtime, come home and find some 
baby crying, or child who has been sitting up till 
nobody knows when ; and the next morning, when I 
must be at my office by eight, and wife must attend 
to her children, we are sleepy and headachy. I pro- 
test against making overtures to entrap some hundred 



How shall we entertain our Company f 167 

of my respectable married friends into this snare 
which has so often entangled me. If I had my way, 
I would never go to another party ; and as to giving 
one — I suppose, since my empress has declared her 
intentions, that I shall be brought into doing it ; but 
it shall be under protest." 

" But, you see, we must keep up society," said 
Marianne. 

" But I insist on it," said Bob, " it is n't keeping up 
society. What earthly thing do you learn about peo- 
ple by meeting them in a general crush, where all are 
coming, going, laughing, talking, and looking at each 
other ? No person of common sense ever puts forth 
any idea he cares twopence about, under such cir- 
cumstances ; all that is exchanged is a certain set of 
commonplaces and platitudes which people keep for 
parties, just as they do their kid gloves and finery. 
Now there are our neighbors, the Browns. When 
they drop in of an evening, she knitting, and he with 
the last article in the paper, she really comes out with 
a great deal of fresh, lively, earnest, original talk. We 
have a good time, and I like her so much that it quite 
verges on loving ; but see her in a party, when she 
manifests herself over five or six flounces of pink silk 
and a perfect egg-froth of tulle, her head adorned with 
a thicket of craped hair and roses, and it is plain at 
first viev/ that talking with her is quite out of the ques- 



1 68 The Chiumcy-Corncr. 

tion. What has been done to her head on the out- 
side has evidently had some effect ^\^thin, for she is 
no longer the Mrs. Brown you knew in her every-day 
dress, but Mrs. Brown in a party state of mind, and 
too distracted to think of anything in particular. She 
has a few words that she answers to everything you 
say, as, for example, * O, very ! ' * Certainly ! ' ' How 
extraordinary ! ' ' So happy to,' &c. The fact is, that 
she has come into a state in which any real communi- 
cation with her mind and character must be suspend- 
ed till the party is over and she is rested. Now I like 
society, which is the reason why I hate parties. 

"But you see," said Marianne, "what are we to 
do ? Everybody can't drop in to spend an evening 
with you. If it were not for these parties, there are 
quantities of your acquaintances whom you would 
never meet." 

"And of what use is it to meet them? Do you 
really know them any better for meeting them got up 
in unusual dresses, and sitting down together when 
the only thing exchanged is the remark that it is hot 
or cold, or it rains, or it is dry, or any other patent 
surface-fact that answers the purpose of making be- 
lieve you are talking when neither of you is saying a 
word ? " 

"Well, now, for my part," said Marianne, "I con- 
fess I like parties : they amuse me. I come home 



How shall we entertain our Company f 169 

feeling kinder and better to people, just for the little 
I see of them when they are all dressed up and in 
good humor with themselves. To be sure we don't 
say anything very profound, — I don't think the most 
of us have anything very profound to say ; but I ask 
Mrs. Brown where she buys her lace, and she tells me 
how she washes it, and somebody else tells me about 
her baby, and promises me a new sack-pattern. Then 
I like to see the pretty, nice young girls flirting with 
the nice young men ; and I like to be dressed up a 
little myself, even if my finery is all old and many 
times made over. It does me good to be rubbed up 
and brightened." 

"Like old silver," said Bob. 

" Yes, like old silver, precisely ; and even if I do 
come home tired, it does my mind good to have that 
change of scene and faces. You men do not know 
what it is to be tied to house and nursery all day, and 
what a perfect weariness and lassitude it often brings 
on us women. For my part, I think parties are a 
beneficial institution of society, and that it is worth a 
good deal of fatigue and trouble to get one up." 

"Then there's the expense," said Bob. "What 
earthly need is there of a grand regale of oysters, 
chicken-salad, ice-creams, coffee, and champagne, be- 
tween eleven and twelve o'clock at night, when no 
one of us would ever think of wanting or taking any 
8 



170 The Ch'ujuicy-Conier. 

such articles upon our stomachs in our own homes ? 
If we were all of us in the habit of having a regular 
repast at that hour, it might be well enough to enjoy 
one with our neighbor ; but the party fare is generally 
iiist so much in addition to the honest three meals 
which we have eaten during the day. No\v', to spend 
from fifty to one, two, or three hundred dollars in giv- 
ing all our friends an indigestion from a midnight 
meal seems to me a very poor investment. Yet if we 
once begin to give the party, we must have everything 
that is given at the other parties, or wherefore do we 
live ? And caterers and waiters rack their brains to 
devise new forms of expense and extravagance ; and 
when the bill comes in, one is sure to feel that one is 
paying a great deal of money for a great deal of non- 
sense. It is, in fact, worse than nonsense, because 
our dear friends are, in half the cases, not only no bet- 
ter, but a great deal worse, for what they have eaten." 
■ " But there is this advantage to society," said Ru- 
dolph, — " it helps us young physicians. What would 
the physicians do if parties were abolished ? Take all 
the colds that are caught by our fiiir friends with low 
necks and short sleeves, all the troubles from dancing 
in tight dresses and inhaling bad air, and all the 
headaches and indigestions from the melange of lob- 
ster-salad, two or three kinds of ice-cream, cake, and 
coffee on delicate stomachs, and our profession gets a 



How shall we entertam otir Company f \ji 

degree of encouragement that is worthy to be thought 
of." 

"But the question arises," said my wife, "whether 
there are not ways of promoting social feehng less 
expensive, more simple and natural and rational. I 
am inclined to think that there are." 

" Yes," said Theophilus Thoro ; " for large parties 
are not, as a general thing, given with ^ny wish or 
intention of really improving our acquaintance with 
our neighbors. In many cases they are openly and 
avowedly a general tribute paid at intervals to society, 
for and in consideration of which you are to sit with 
closed blinds and doors and be let alone for the rest 
of the year. Mrs. Bogus, for instance, lives to keep 
her house in order, her closets locked, her silver 
counted and in the safe, and her china-closet in un- 
disturbed order. Her * best things ' are put away with 
such admirable precision, in so many wrappings and 
foldings, and secured with so many a twist and twine, 
that to get them out is one of the seven labors of 
Hercules, not to be lightly or unadvisedly taken in 
hand, but reverently, discreetly, and once for all, in 
an annual or biennial party. Then says Mrs. Bogus, 
' For Heaven's sake, let 's have every creature we can 
think of, and have 'em all over with at once. For 
pity's sake, let 's have no driblets left that we shall 
have to be inviting to dinner or to tea. No matter 



172 The Chimney-Corner, 

whether they can come or not, — only send them the 
invitation, and our part is done ; and, thank Heaven ! 
we shall be free for a year.' " 

"Yes," said my wife ; "a great stand-up party 
bears just the same relation towards the offer of real 
hospitality and good-will as Miss Sally Brass's offer 
of meat to the little hungry Marchioness, when, with 
a bit uplifted on the end of a fork, she addressed her, 
* Will you have this piece of meat ? No ? Well, then, 
remember and don't say you have n't had meat offered 
to you ! ' You are invited to a general jam, at the risk 
of your life and health ; and if you refuse, don't say 
you have n't had hospitality offered to you. All our 
debts are wiped out and our slate clean ; now we will 
have our own closed doors, no company and no 
trouble, and our best china shall repose undisturbed 
on its shelves. Mrs. Bogus says she never could exist 
in the way that Mrs. Easygo does, with a constant 
drip of company, — two or three to breakfast one day, 
half a dozen to dinner the next, and little evening 
gatherings once or twice a week. It must keep her 
house in confusion all the time ; yet, for real social 
feeling, real exchange of thought and opinion, there is 
more of it in one half-hour at Mrs. Easygo's than in a 
dozen of Mrs. Bogus's great parties. 

" The fact is, that Mrs. Easygo really does like the 
society of human beings. She is genuinely and heart- 



How shall we entertain our Company^ 173 

ily social ; and, in consequence, though she has very- 
limited means, and no money to spend in giving great 
entertainments, her domestic establishment is a sort 
of social exchange, where more friendships are formed, 
more real acquaintance made, and more agreeable 
hours spent, than in any other place that can be 
named. She never has large parties, — great general 
pay-days of social debts, — but small, well-chosen cir- 
cles of people, selected so thoughtfully, with a view 
to the pleasure which congenial persons give each 
other, as to make the invitation an act of real per- 
sonal kindness. She always manages to have some- 
thing for the entertainment of her friends, so that 
they are not reduced to the simple alternatives of 
ga'ping at each other's dresses and eating lobster-salad 
and ice-cream. There is either some choice music, 
or a reading of fine poetry, or a well-acted charade, or 
a portfolio of photographs and pictures, to enliven the 
hour and start conversation ; and as the people are 
skilfully chosen with reference to each other, as there 
is no hurry or heat or confusion, conversation, in its 
best sense, can bubble up, fresh, genuine, clear, and 
sparkling as a woodland spring, and one goes away 
really rested and refreshed. The slight entertainment 
provided is just enough to enable you to eat salt 
together in Arab fashion, — not enough to form the 
leading feature of the evening. A cup of tea and a 



174 The Chimncy-Coriier. 

basket of cake, or a salver of ices, silently passed at 
quiet intervals, do not interrupt conversation or over- 
load the stomach." 

" The fact is," said I, " that the art of society among 
us Anglo-Saxons is yet in its ruder stages. We are 
not, as a race, social and confiding, like the French 
and Italians and Germans. We have a word for 
home, and our home is often a moated grange, an 
island, a castle with its drawbridge up, cutting us off 
from all but our own home-circle. In France and 
Germany and Italy there arc the boulevards and pub- 
lic gardens, where people do their fomily living in 
common. Mr. A. is breakfasting under one tree, with 
wife and children around, and Mr. B. is breakfasting 
under another tree, hard by ; and messages, nods, amd 
smiles pass backward and forward. Families see 
each other daily in these public resorts, and exchange 
mutual offices of good-will. Perhaps from these cus- 
toms of society come that naive simplicity and abaii- 
don which one remarks in the Continental, in opposi- 
tion to the Anglo-Saxon, habits of conversation. A 
Frenchman or an Italian will talk to you of his feel- 
ings and plans and prospects with an unreserve that 
is perfectly unaccountable to you, who have always 
felt that such things must be kept for the very inner- 
most circle of home privacy. But the Frenchman or 
Italian has from a child been brought up to pass his 



How shall we eniertaiji our Company f 175 

family life in places of public resort, in constant con- 
tact and intercommunion with other families ; and the 
social and conversational instinct has thus been daily 
strengthened. Hence the reunions of these people 
have been characterized by a sprightliness and vigor 
and spirit that the Anglo-Saxon has in vain attempted 
to seize and reproduce. English and American con- 
versazioni have very generally proved a failure, from 
the rooted, frozen habit of reticence and reserve 
which grows with our growth and strengthens with 
our strength. The fact is, that the Anglo-Saxon race 
as a race does not enjoy talking, and, except in rare 
instances, does not talk well. A daily convocation of 
people, without refreshments or any extraneous object 
but the simple pleasure of seeing and talking with 
each other, is a thing that can scarcely be understood 
in English or American society. Social entertainment 
presupposes in the Anglo-Saxon mind something to eat, 
and not only something, but a great deal. Enormous 
dinners or great suppers constitute the entertainment. 
Nobody seems to have formed the idea that the talk- 
ing — the simple exchange of the social feelings — is, 
of itself, the entertainment, and that being together is 
the pleasure. 

" Madame Recamier for years had a circle of friends 
who met every afternoon in her saloJt from four to six 
o'clock, for the simple and sole pleasure of talking 



iy6 The CJiimney-Corncr. 

with each other. The very first wits and men of let- 
ters and statesmen and savans were enrolled in it, and 
each brought to the entertainment some choice mor- 
ccau which he had laid aside from his own particular 
field to add to the feast. The daily intimacy gave 
each one such perfect insight into all the others' habits 
of thought, tastes, and preferences, that the conversa- 
tion was like the celebrated music of the Consen'aioire 
in Paris, a concert of perfectly chorded instruments 
taught by long habit of harmonious intercourse to 
keep exact time and tune together. 

" i?^/ conversation presupposes intimate acquaint- 
ance. People must see each other often enough to 
wear off the rough bark and outside rind of common- 
places and conventionalities in which their real ideas 
are enwrapped, and give forth without reserve their 
innermost and best feelings. Now what is called a 
large party is the first and rudest form of social inter- 
course. The most we can say of it is, that it is better 
than nothing. Men and women are crowded together 
like cattle in a pen. They look at each other, they 
jostle each other, exchange a few common bleatings, 
and eat together ; and so the performance terminates. 
One may be crushed evening after evening against 
men or women, and learn very little about them. You 
may decide that a lady is good-tempered, when any 
amount of trampling on the skirt of her new silk dress 



How shall we entertain our Company'? 177 

brings no cloud to her brow. But is it good temper, 
or only wanton carelessness, which cares nothing for 
waste ? You can see that a man is not a gentleman 
who squares his back to ladies at the supper-table, 
and devours boned turkey and pate defois gras, while 
they vainly reach over and around him for something, 
and that another is a gentleman so far as to prefer the 
care of his weaker neighbors to the immediate indul- 
gence of his* own appetites; but further than this you 
learn little. Sometimes, it is true, in some secluded 
corner, two people of fine nervous system, undisturbed 
by the general confusion, may have a sociable half- 
hour, and really part feeling that they like each other 
better, and know more of each other than before. 
Yet these general gatherings have, after all, their 
value. They are not so good as something better 
would be, but they cannot be wholly dispensed with. 
It is far better that Mrs. Bogus should give an annual 
party, when she takes down all her bedsteads and 
throws open her whole house, than that she should 
never see her friends and neighbors inside her doors 
at all. She may feel that she has neither the taste 
nor the talent for constant small reunions. Such 
things, she may feel, require a social tact which she 
has not. She would be utterly at a loss how to con- 
duct them. Each one would cost her as much anx- 
iety and thought as her annual gathering, and prove 
8* L 



178 The Chimney-Corner. 

a failure after all ; whereas the annual demonstration 
can be put wholly into the hands of the caterer, who 
comes in force, with flowers, silver, china, servants, 
and, taking the house into his own hands, gives her 
entertainment for her, leaving to her no responsibility 
but the payment of the bills ; and if Mr. Bogus does 
not quarrel with them, we know no reason why any 
one else should ; and I think Mrs. Bogus merits well 
of the republic, for doing what she can do towards the 
hospitalities of the season. I 'm sure I never cursed 
her in my heart, even when her strong coffee has held 
mine eyes open till morning, and her superlative lob- 
ster-salads have given me the very darkest views of 
human life that ever dyspepsia and east wind could 
engender. Mrs. Bogus is the Eve who offers the 
apple ; but, after all, I am the foolish Adam who take 
and eat what I know is going to hurt me, and I am 
too gallant to visit my sins on the head of my too 
obliging tempter. In country places in particular, 
where little is going on and life is apt to stagnate, a 
good, large, generous party, which brings the whole 
neighborhood into one house to have a jolly time, to 
eat, drink, and be merry, is really quite a work of 
love and mercy. People see one another in their 
best Ciothes, and that is something ; the elders ex- 
change all manner of simple pleasantries and civilities, 
and talk over their domestic affairs, while the young 



How shall we entertain onr Company 'i 179 

people flirt, in that wholesome manner which is one 
of the safest of youthful follies. A country party, in 
fact, may be set down as a work of benevolence, and 
the money expended thereon fairly charged to the 
account of the great cause of peace and good-will on 
earth." 

" But don't you think," said my wife, " that, if the 
charge of providing the entertainment were less labo- 
rious, these gatherings could be more frequent ? You 
see, if a woman feels that she must have five kinds of 
cake, and six kinds of preserves, and even ice-cream 
and jellies in a region where no confectioner comes 
in to abbreviate her labors, she will sit with closed 
doors, and do nothing towards the general exchange 
of life, because she cannot do as much as Mrs. Smith 
or Mrs. Parsons. If the idea of meeting together had 
some other focal point than eating, I think there 
would be more social feeling. It might be a musical 
reunion, where the various young people of a circle 
agreed to furnish each a song or an instrumental per- 
formance. It might be an impromptu charade party, 
bringing out something of that taste in arrangement 
of costume, and capacity for dramatic effect, of which 
there is more latent in society than we think. It 
might be the reading of articles in prose and poetry 
furnished to a common paper or portfolio, which 
would awaken an abundance of interest and specula- 



i8o The Chimney-Corner. 

tion on the authorship, or it might be dramatic read- 
ings and recitations. Any or all of these pastimes 
might make an evening so entertaining that a simple 
cup of tea and a plate of cake or biscuit would be all 
the refreshment needed." 

"We may with advantage steal a leaf now and 
then from some foreign book," said I. " In France 
and Italy, families have their peculiar days set apart 
for the reception of friends at their own houses. 
The whole house is put upon a footing of hospitality 
and invitation, and the whole mind is given to receiv- 
ing the various friends. In the evening the salo7i is 
filled. The guests, coming from week to week, for 
years, become in time friends ; the resort has the 
charm of a home circle ; there are certain faces that 
you are always sure to meet there. A lady once said 
to me of a certain gentleman and lady whom she 
missed from her circle, ' They have been at our house 
every Wednesday evening for twenty years.' It seems 
to me that this frequency of meeting is the great 
secret of agreeable society. One sees, in our Ameri- 
can life, abundance of people who are everything that 
is charming and cultivated, but one never sees enough 
of them. One meets them at some quiet reunion, 
passes a delightful hour, thinks how charming they 
are, and wishes one could see more of them. ' But the 
pleasant meeting is like the encounter of two ships in 



How shall we efitertain our Company f i8i 

mid-ocean : away we sail, each on his respective 
course, to see each other no more till the pleasant 
remembrance has died away. Yet were there some 
quiet, home-like resort where we might turn in to 
renew from time to time the pleasant intercourse, to 
continue the last conversation, and to compare anew 
our readings and our experiences, the pleasant hour 
of liking would ripen into a warm friendship. 

" But in order that this may be made possible and 
practicable, the utmost simplicity of entertainment 
must prevail. In a French salon^ all is, to the last 
degree, informal. The boiiilloire, the French tea-ket- 
tle, is often tended by one of the gentlemen, who aids 
his fair neighbors in the mysteries of tea-making. 
One nymph is always to be found at the table dispens- 
ing tea and talk ; and a basket of simple biscuit and 
cakes, offered by another, is all the further repast. 
The teacups and cake-basket are a real addition to 
the scene, because they cause a little lively social 
bustle, a little chatter and motion, — always of advan- 
tage in breaking up stiffness, and giving occasion for 
those graceful, airy nothings that answer so good a 
purpose in facilitating acquaintance. 

" Nothing can be more charming than the descrip- 
tion which Edmond About gives, in his novel of 
'Tolla,' of the reception evenings of an old noble 
Roman family, — the spirit of repose and quietude 



1 82 The Chimney-Corner. 

through all the apartments, — the ease of coming and 
going, — the perfect homelike spirit in which the 
guests settle themselves to any employment of the 
hour that best suits them, — some to lively chat, some 
to dreamy, silent lounging, some to a game, others, in 
a distant apartment, to music, and others still to a 
promenade along the terraces. 

" One is often in a state of mind and nerves which 
indisposes for the effort of active conversation ; one 
wishes to rest, to observe, to be amused without an 
effort ; and a mansion which opens wide its hospitable 
arms, and offers itself to you as a sort of home, where 
you may rest, and do just as the humor suits you, is 
a perfect godsend at such times. You are at home 
there, your ways are understood, you can do as you 
please, — come early or late, be brilliant or dull, — 
you are always welcome. If you can do nothing for 
the social whole to-night, it matters not. There are 
many more nights to come in the future, and you are 
entertained on trust, without a challenge. 

" I have one friend, — a man of genius, subject to 
the ebbs and flows of animal spirits which attend that 
c '■ganization. Of general society he has a nervous 
horror. A regular dinner or evening party is to him 
a terror, an impossibility ; but there is a quiet parlor 
where stands a much-worn old sofa, and it is his 
delight to enter without knocking, and be found lying 



How shall we entertain otir Company? 183 

with half-shut eyes on this friendly couch, while the 
family life goes on around him without a question. 
Nobody is to mind him, to tease him with inquiries or 
salutations. If he will, he breaks into the stream of 
conversation, and sometimes, rousing up from one of 
these dreamy trances, finds himself, ere he or they 
know how, in the mood for free and friendly talk. 
People often wonder, ' How do you catch So-and-so ? 
He is so shy ! I have invited and invited, and he 
never comes.' We never invite, and he comes. We 
take no note of his coming or his going ; we do not 
startle his. entrance with acclamation, nor clog his 
• departure with expostulation; it is fully understood 
that with us he shall do just as he chooses ; and so 
he chooses to do much that we like. 

" The sum of this whole doctrine of society is, that 
we are to try the value of all modes and forms of 
social entertainment by their effect in producing real 
acquaintance and real friendship and good-will. The 
first and rudest form of seeking this is by a great 
promiscuous party, which simply effects this, — that 
people at least see each other on the outside, and 
eat together. Next come all those various forms of 
reunion in which the entertainment consists of some- 
thing higher than staring and eating, — some exercise 
of the faculties of the guests in music, acting, recita- 
tion, reading, etc. ; and these are a great advance, 



184 The CJiiinncy-Corncy. 

because they show people what is in them, and thus 
lay a foundation for a more intelligent appreciation 
and acquaintance. These are the best substitute for 
the expense, show, and trouble of large parties. They 
are in their nature more refining and intellectuat It 
is astonishing, when people really put together, in 
some one club or association, all the difterent talents 
for pleasing possessed by different persons, how clever 
a circle may be gathered, — in the least promising 
neighborhood. A club of ladies in one of our cities 
has had quite a brilliant success. It is held every 
fortnight at the house of the members, according to 
alphabetical sequence. The lady who receives has. 
charge of arranging what the entertainment shall be, 
— whether charade, tableau, reading, recitation, or 
music ; and the interest is much increased by the 
individual taste shown in the choice of the diversion 
and the variety which thence follows. 

*' In the summer time, in the country, open-air 
reunions are charming forms of social entertainment. 
Croquet parties, which bring young people together 
by daylight for a healthy exercise, and end with a 
moderate share of the evening, are a very desirable 
amusement. What are called ' lawn teas ' are finding 
great favor in England and some parts of our country. 
They are simply an early tea enjoyed in a sort of 
picnic style in the grounds about the house. Such an 



How shall we entertain otir Company f 185 

entertainment enables one to receive a great many at 
a time, without crowding, an;^, being in its very idea 
rustic and informal, can be arranged with very little 
expense or trouble. With the addition of lanterns in 
the trees and a little music, this entertainment may 
be carried on far into the evening with a very pretty 
effect. 

" As to dancing, I have this much to say of it. 
Either our houses must be all built over and made 
larger, or female crinolines must be made smaller, or 
dancing must continue as it now is, the most absurd 
and ungraceful of all attempts at amusement. The 
effort to execute round dances in the limits of modern 
houses, in the prevailing style of dress, can only lead 
to developments more startling than agreeable. Dan- 
cing in the open air, on the shaven green of lawns, is 
a pretty and graceful exercise, and there only can full 
sweep be allowed for the present feminine toilet. 

" The English breakfast is an institution growing in 
favor here, and rightfully, too ; for a party of fresh, 
good-natured, vi^ell - dressed people, assembled at 
breakfast on a summer morning, is as nearly perfect 
a form of reunion as can be devised. All are in full 
strength from their night's rest ; the hour is fresh and 
lovely, and they are in condition to give each other 
the very cream of their thoughts, the first keen 
sparkle of the uncorked nervous system. The only 



1 86 TJic CJiiitiiuy-Conicr. 

drawback is, that, in our busy American life, the most 
desirable gentlemen often cannot spare their morning 
hours. Breakfast parties presuppose a condition of 
leisure ; but when they can be compassed, they are 
perhaps the most perfectly enjoyable of entertain- 
ments." 

'' Well," said Marianne, " I begin to waver about 
my party. I don't know, after all, but the desire of 
paying oft' social debts prompted the idea ; perhaps 
we might try some of the agreeable things suggested. 
But, dear me ! there 's the baby. We '11 finish the 
talk some other time." 



VIII. 

HOW SHALL WE BE AMUSED? 

" /'^NIC, two, three, four, — this makes the fifth 

^^ accident on the Fourth of July, in the two 
papers I have just read," said Jenny. 

" A very moderate allowance," said Theophilus 
Thoro, " if you consider the Fourth as a great na- 
tional saturnalia, in which every boy in the land has 
the privilege of doing whatever is right in his own 
eyes." 

^- The poor boys ! " said Mrs. Crowfield. " All the 
troubles of the world are laid at their door." 

"Well," said Jenny, "they did burn the city of 
Portland, it appears. The fire arose from fire-crackers, 
thrown by boys among the shavings of a carpenter's 
shop, — so says the paper." 

"And," said Rudolph, "we surgeons expect a har- 
vest of business from the Fourth, as surely as from a 
battle. Certain to be woundings, fractures, possibly 
amputations, following the proceedings of our glorious 
festival." 



1 88 TJie CJiimncy-Corncr. 

"Why cannot we Americans learn to amuse our- 
selves peaceably like other nations?" said Bob 
Stephens. " In France and Italy, the greatest nation- 
al festivals pass off without fatal accident, or danger 
to any one. The fact is, in our country we have not 
learned how to he amused. Amusement has been 
made of so small account in our philosophy of life, 
that we are raw and unpractised in being amused. 
Our diversions, compared with those of the politer 
nations of Europe, are coarse and savage, — and con- 
sist mainly in making disagreeable noises and disturb- 
ing the peace of the community by rude uproar. The 
only idea an American boy associates with the Fourth 
of July is that of gunpowder in some form, and a 
wild liberty to fire off pistols in all miscellaneous 
directions, and to throw hre-crackers under the heels 
of horses, and into crowds of women and children, 
for the fun of seeing the stir and commotion thus pro- 
duced. Now take a young Parisian boy and give him 
a fete, and he conducts himself with greater gentle- 
ness and good breeding, because he is part of a com- 
munity in which the art of amusement has been re- 
fined and perfected, so that he has a thousand re- 
sources beyond the very obvious one of making a 
great banging and disturbance. 

"Yes," continued Bob Stephens, "the fact is, that 
our grim old Puritan fathers set their feet down reso- 



How shall we he amused f 189 

lutely on all forms of amusement ; they would have 
stopped the lambs from wagging their tails, and shot 
the birds for singing, if they could have had their 
way; and in consequence of it, what a barren, cold, 
flowerless life is our New England existence ! Life 
is all, as Mantalini said, one ' demd horrid grind.' 
* Nothing here but working and going to church,' said 
the German emigrants, — and they were about right. 
A French traveller, in the year 1837, says that attend- 
ing the Thursday-evening lectures and church prayer- 
meetings was the only recreation of the young people 
of Boston ; and we can remember the time when this 
really was no exaggeration. Think of that, with all 
the seriousness of our Boston east winds to give it 
force, and fancy the provision for amusement in our 
society ! The consequence is, that boys who have the 
longing for amusement strongest within them, and 
plenty of combativeness to back it, are the standing 
terror of good society, and our Fourth of July is a day 
of fear to all invalids and persons of delicate nervous 
organization, and of real, appreciable danger of life 
and limb to every one." 

" Well, Robert," said my wife, " though I agree 
with you as to the actual state of society in this 
respect, I must enter my protest against your slur on 
the memory of our Pilgrim fathers." 

" Yes," said Theophilus Thoro, " the New-England- 



1 90 TJic CJiivuh-y-Conicy. 

ers are the only people, I believe, who take delight 
in vilifying their ancestry. Every young hopeful in 
our day makes a target of his grandfather's grave- 
stone, and fires away, with great self-applause. Peo- 
ple in general seem to like to show tha^ they are 
well-born, and come of good stock ; but the young 
New-Englanders, many of them, appear to take pleas- 
ure in insisting that they came of a race of narrow- 
minded, persecuting bigots. 

" It is true, that our Puritan ilithers saw not every- 
thing. They made a state where there were no 
amusements, but where people could go to bed and 
leave their house doors wide open all night, without 
a shadow of fear or danger, as was for years the 
custom in all our country villages. The fact is, that 
the simple early New England life, before we began 
to import foreigners, realized a state of society in 
whose possibility Europe would scarcely believe. If 
our fathers had few amusements, they needed few. 
Life was too really and solidly comfortable and happy 
to need much amusement. 

" Look over the countries where people are most 
sedulously amused by their rulers and governors. 
Are they not the countries where the people are most 
oppressed, most unhappy in their circumstances, and 
therefore in greatest need of amusement ? It is the 
slave who dances and sings, and why ? Because he 



How shall we be amused? 191 

owns nothing, and can own nothing, and may as well 
dance and forget the fact. But give the slave a farm 
of his own, a wife of his own, and children of his own, 
with a school-house and a vote, and ten to one he 
dances no more. He needs no amusetnent^ because 
he is happy. 

" The legislators of Europe wished nothing more 
than to bring up a people who would be content with 
amusements, and not ask after their rights or think 
too closely how they were governed. * Gild the dome 
of the Invalides,' was Napoleon's scornful prescrip- 
tion, when he heard the Parisian population were dis- 
contented. They gilded it, and the people forgot to 
talk about anything else. They were a childish race, 
educated from the cradle on spectacle and show, and 
by the sight of their eyes could they be governed. 
The people of Boston, in 1776, could not have been 
managed in this .way, chiefly because they were 
brought up in the strict schools of the fathers." 

" But don't you think," said Jenny, " that something 
might be added and amended in the state of society 
our fathers established here in New England ? With- 
out becoming frivolous, there might be more attention 
paid to rational amusement." 

" Certainly," said my wife, " the State and the 
Church both might take a lesson from the providence 
of foreign governments, and make liberty, to say the 



192 TJie Ckimney-Corner. 

least, as attractive as despotism. It is a very unwise 
mother that does not provide her children with play- 
things." 

"And yet," said Bob, "the only thing that the 
Church has yet done is to forbid and to frown. We 
have abundance of tracts against dancing, whist-play- 
ing, ninepins, billiards, operas, theatres, — in short, 
anything that young people would be apt to like. 
The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church 
refused to testify against slavery, because of political 
diffidence, but made up for it by ordering a more 
stringent crusade against dancing. The theatre and 
opera grow up and exist among us like plants on the 
windy side of a hill, blown all awry by a constant 
blast of conscientious rebuke. There is really no 
amusement young people are fond of, which they do 
not pursue, in a sort of defiance of the frown of the 
peculiarly religious world. With all the telling of 
what the young shall not do, there has been very little 
telling what they shall do. 

" The whole department of amusements — certainly 
one of the most important in education — has been 
by the Church made a sort of outlaws' ground, to be 
taken possession of and held by all sorts of spiritual 
ragamuffins ; and then the faults and short-comings 
resulting from this arrangement have been held up 
and insisted on as reasons why no Christian should 
ever venture into it. 



How shall we be amused f 193 

"If the Church would set herself to amuse her 
young folks, instead of discussing doctrines and meta- 
physical hair-splitting, she would, prove herself a true 
mother, and not a hard-visaged step-dame. Let her 
keep this department, so powerful and~ so difficult to 
manage, in what are morally the strongest hands, 
instead of giving it up to the weakest. 

'' I think, if the different churches of a city, for 
example, would rent a building where there should be 
a billiard-table, one or two ninepin-alleys, a reading- 
room, a garden and grounds for ball-playing or inno- 
cent lounging, that they would do more to keep their 
young people from the ways of sin than a Sunday 
school could. Nay, more : I would go further. I 
would have a portion of the building fitted up with 
scenery and a stage, for the getting up of tableaux or 
dramatic performances, and thus give scope for the 
exercise of that histrionic talent of which there is so 
much lying unemployed in society. 

" Young people do not like amusements any better 
for the wickedness connected with them. The spec- 
tacle of a sweet little child singing hymns, and repeat- 
ing prayers, of a pious old Uncle Tom dying for his 
religion, has filled theatres night after night, and 
proved that there really is no need of indecent or 
improper plays to draw full houses. 

" The things that draw young pecTple to places of 

9 ^* M 



194 T^he Chininey-Corner. 

amusement are not at first gross things. Take the 
most notorious pubhc place in Paris, — the Jardin 
Mabille, for instance, — and the things which give it 
its first charm are all innocent and artistic. Exquisite 
beds of lilies, roses, gillyflowers, lighted with jets of 
gas so artfully as to make every flower translucent as 
a gem ; fountains where the gas-light streams out from 
behind misty wreaths of falling water and calla-blos- 
soms ; sofas of velvet turf, canopied with fragrant 
honeysuckle ; dim bowers overarched with lilacs and 
roses ; a dancing ground under trees whose branches 
bend with a fruitage of many-colored lamps ; enchant- 
ing music and graceful motion ; in all these there is 
not only no sin, but they are really beautiful and 
desirable ; and if they were only used on the side and 
in the service of virtue and religion, if they were con- 
trived and kept up by the guardians and instructors 
of youth, instead of by those whose interest it is to 
demoralize and destroy, young people would have no 
temptation to stray into the haunts of vice. 

" In Prussia, under the reign of Frederick William 
IL, when one good, hard-handed man governed the 
whole country like a strict schoolmaster, the public 
amusements for the people were made such as fo pre- 
sent a model for all states. The theatres were strictly 
supervised, and actors obliged to conform to the rules 
of decorum and morality. The plays and perform- 



How shall we he amused? 195 

ances were under the immediate supervision of men 
of grave morals, who allowed nothing corrupting to 
appear; and the effect of this administration and 
restraint is to be seen in Berlin even to this day. 
The public gardens are full of charming little resorts, 
where, every afternoon, for a very moderate sum, one 
can have either a concert of good music, or a very 
fair dramatic or operatic performance. Here whole 
families may be seen enjoying together a wholesome 
and refreshing entertainment, — the mother and aunts 
with their knitting, the baby, the children of all ages, 
and the father, — their faces radiant with that mild 
German light of contentment and good-will which one 
feels to be characteristic of the nation. When I saw 
these things, and thought of our own outcast, unpro- 
vided boys and young men, haunting the streets and 
alleys of cities, in places far from the companionship 
of mothers and sisters, I felt as if it would be better ' 
for a nation to be brought up by a good strict school- 
master king than to try to be a republic." 

" Yes," said I, " but the difficulty is to ^et the good 
schoolmaster king. For one good shepherd, there 
are twenty who use the sheep only for thejr flesh and 
their wool. Republics can do all that kings can, — 
witness our late army and Sanitary Commission. 
Once fix the idea thoroughly in the public mind that 
there ought to be as regular arid careful provision for 



196 TJie CJiimuiy-Conicr. 

public amusement as there is for going to cluiich and 
Sunday school, and it will be done. Central Park in 
New York is a beginning in the right direction, and 
Brooklyn is following the example oi her sister city. 
There is, moreover, an indication of the proper spirit 
in the increased elTorts that are made to beautify Sun- 
day-school rooms, and make them interesting, and to 
have Sunday-school fetes and picnics, — the most 
harmless and commendable way of celebrating the 
Fourth oi July. Why should saloons and bar-rooms 
be made attractive by thie paintings, choice music, 
flowers, and Ibuntains, and Sunday-school rooms be 
four bare walls ? There are churches whose broad 
aisles represent ten and twenty millions of dollars, and 
whose sons and daughters are daily drawn to circuses, 
operas, theatres, because they have tastes and feelings, 
in themselves perfectly laudable and innocent, for the 
gratification of which no provision is made in any 
other place." 

" I know one church," said Rudolph, " whose Sun- 
day-school room is as beautifully adorned as any 
haunt of sin. There is a fountain in the centre, 
which plays into a basin surrounded with shells and 
flowers ; it has a small organ to lead the children's 
voices, and the walls are hung with oil-paintings and 
engravings from the best masters. The festivals of 
the Sabbath school, which are from time to time held 



How shall wc he amused? 197 

in this place, educate the taste of the children, as well 
as amuse them ; and, above all, they have through 
life the advantage of associating with their early relig- 
ious education all those ideas of taste, elegance, and 
artistic culture which too often come through polluted 
channels. 

"When the amusement of the young shall become 
the care of the exj^erienced and the wise, and the 
Hoods of wealth that are now rolling over and over, 
in silent investments, shall be put into the form of 
innocent and refined pleasures for the children and 
youth of the state, our national festivals may become 
days to be desired, and not dreaded. 

" On the Fourth of July, our city fathers do in a 
certain dim wise perceive that the public owes some 
attempt at amusement to its children, and they vote 
large sums, principally expended in bell-ringing, can- 
nons, and fireworks. The side-walks are witness to 
the number who fall victims to the temptations held 
out by grog shops and saloons ; and the papers, for 
weeks after, are crowded with accounts of accidents. 
Now, a yearly sum expended to keep up, and keep 
pure, places of amusement which hold out no tempta- 
tion to vice, but which excel all vicious places in real 
beauty and attractiveness, would greatly lessen the 
sum needed to be expended on any one particular 
day, and would refine and prepare our people to keep 
holidays and festivals appropriately." 



198 The CJiimney-Corner. 

" For my part," said Mrs. Crowfield, " I am grieved 
at the opprobrium which falls on the race of hoys. 
Why should the most critical era in the life of those 
who are to be men, and to govern society, be passed in 
a sort of outlawry, — a rude warfare with aU existing 
institutions ? The years between ten and twenty are 
full of the nervous excitability which marks the growth 
and maturing of the manly nature. The boy feels 
wild impulses, which ought to be vented in legitimate 
and healthful exercise. He wants to run, shout, 
wrestle, ride, row, skate ; and all these together are 
often not sufficient to relieve the need he feels of 
throwing off the excitability that burns within. 

" For the wants of this period what safe provision is 
made by the Church, or by the State, or any of the 
boy's lawful educators ? In all the Prussian schools 
amusements are as much a part of the regular school- 
system as grammar or geography. The teacher is 
with the boys on the play-ground, and plays as heart- 
ily as any of them. The boy has his physical wants 
anticipated. He is not left to fight his way, blindly 
stumbling against society, but goes forward in a safe 
path, which his elders and betters have marked out 
for him. 

" In our country, the boy's career is often a series 
of skirmishes with society. He wants to skate, and 
contrives ingeniously to dam the course of a brook, 



Hozv shall we he mmisedf 199 

and flood a meadow which makes a splendid skating- 
ground. Great is the joy for a season, and great the 
skating. But the water floods the neighboring cel- 
lars. The boys are cursed through all the moods and 
tenses, — boys are such a plague ! The dam is torn 
down with emphasis and execration. The boys, how- 
ever, lie in wait some cold night, between twelve and 
one, and build it up again ; and thus goes on the bat- 
tle. The boys care not whose cellar they flood, be- 
cause nobody cares for their amusement. They un- 
derstand themselves to be outlaws, and take an out- 
law's advantage. 

"Again, the boys have their sleds ; and sliding 
down hill is splendid fun. But they trip up some 
grave citizen, who sprains his shoulder. What is the 
result ? Not the provision of a safe, good place, 
where boys may slide down hill without danger to 
any one, but an edict forbidding all sliding, under 
penalty of fine. 

" Boys want to swim : it is best they should SAvim ; 
and if city fathers, foreseeing and caring for this want, 
should think it worth while to mark off some good 
place, and have it under such police surveillance as 
to enforce decency of language and demeanor, they 
would prevent a great deal that now is disagreeable in 
the unguided efforts of boys to enjoy this luxury. 

" It would be cheaper in the end, even if one had to 



200 Tlic CJiiDUicy-CoDicr. 

build sliding-pilcs, as they do in Russia, or to build 
skating-rinks, as they do in Montreal, — it would be 
cheaper for every city, town, and village to provide 
legitimate amusement for boys, under proper superin- 
tendence, than to leave them, as they are now left, to 
fight their way against society. 

" In the boys' academies of our country, what pro- 
vision is made for amusement ? There are stringent 
rules, and any number of them, to prevent boys mak- 
ing any noise that may disturb the neighbors ; and 
generally the teacher thinks that, if he keeps the boys 
siill, and sees that they get their lessons, his duty is 
done. But a hundred boys ought not to be kept still. 
There ought to be noise and motion among them, 
in order that they may healthily survive the great 
changes which Nature is working within them. If 
they become silent, averse to movement, fond of in- 
door lounging and warm rooms, they are going in far 
worse ways than any amount of outward lawlessness 
could bring them to. 

" Smoking and yellow-covered novels are worse 
than any amount of hullabaloo ; and the quietest boy 
is often a poor, ignorant victim, whose life is being 
drained out of him before it is well begun. If moth- 
ers could only see the series of hooks that are'^sold be- 
hind counters to boarding-school boys, whom nobody 
warns and nobody cares for, — if they could sec the 



How shall we be amused f 201 

poison, going from pillow to pillow, in books pretend- 
ing to make clear the great, sacred mysteries of our 
nature, but trailing them over with the filth of utter 
corruption ! These horrible works are the inward and 
secret channel of hell, into which a boy is thrust by 
the pressure of strict outward rules, forbidding that 
physical and out-of-door exercise and motion to 
which he ought rather to be encouraged, and even 
driven. 

" It is melancholy to see that, while parents, teach- 
ers, and churches make no provision for boys in the 
way of amusement, the world, the flesh, and the Devil 
are incessantly busy and active in giving it to them. 
There are ninepin-alleys, with cigars and a bar. 
There are billiard-saloons, with a bar, and, alas ! 
with the occasional company of girls who are still 
beautiful" but who have lost the innocence of woman- 
hood, while yet retaining many of its charms. There 
are theatres, with a bar, and with the society of lost 
women. The boy comes to one and all of these pla- 
ces, seeking only what is natural and proper he should 
have, — what should be given him under the eye and 
by the care of the Church, the school. He comes for 
exercise and amusement, — he gets these, and a ticket 
to destruction besides, — and whose fault is it ? " 

" These are the aspects of public life," said I, 
" which make me feci that we never shall have a per- 
9* 



202 TJic CJiiuuuy-Corucr. 

foct state till women vote and bear rule cqnally with 
men. State housekeeping has been, hitherto, like 
what any housekeeping would be, condueted by the.^ 
voioe and knowledge of man alone. 

" If women had an equal voice in the marhigement 
of our public money, I have faith to believe that thou- 
sands which are now wasted in mere political charla- 
tanism would go to provide for the rearing o{ tlie 
children of the state, male and female. ]\ty wife has 
spoken for the boys ; I speak for the girls also. What 
is provided for their physical development and amuse- 
ment ? Hot, gas-lighted theatric and operatic perform- 
ances, beginning at eight, and ending at midnight ; 
hot, crowded parties and balls ; dancing with dresses 
tightly laced over the laboring lungs, — these arc al- 
most the whole story. I bless the advent of croquet 
and skating. And yet the latter exercise, i:)ursued as. 
it generally is, is a most terrible exposure. There is 
no kindly parental provision for th| poor, thoughtless, 
delicate young creature, — not even the shelter of a 
dressing-room with a fire, at which she may warm her 
numb fingers and put on her skates when she arrives 
on the ground, and to which she may retreat in inter- 
vals of fatigue ; so she catches cold, and perhaps sows 
the seed which with air-tight stoves and other appli- 
ances of hot-house culture may ripen into consump- 
tion. 



How shall IV e he amused f 203 

" What provision is there for the amusement of all 
the shop girls, seamstresses, factory girls, that crowd 
our cities ? What for the thousands of young clerks 
and operatives ? Not long since, in a respectable old 
town in New England, the body of a beautiful girl 
was drawn from the river- in which she had drowned 
herself, — a young girl only fifteen, who came to the 
city, far from home and parents, and fell a victim to 
the temptation which brought her to shame and des- 
peration. Many thus fall every year who are never 
counted. They fall into the ranks of those whom the 
world abandons as irreclaimable. 

" Let those who have homes and every appliance to 
make life pass agreeably, and who yet yawn over an 
unoccupied evening, fancy a lively young girl all day 
cooped up at sewing in a close, ill-ventilated room. 
Evening comes, and she has three times the desire for 
amusement and three times the need of it that her 
fashionable sister has. And where can she go .'' To 
the theatre, perhaps, with some young man as thought- 
less as herself, and more depraved ; then to the bar 
for a glass of wine, and another ; and then, with a 
head swimming and turning, who shall say where 
else she may be led ? Past midnight and no one to 
look after her, — and one night ruins her utterly and 
for life, and she as yet only a child ! 

" John Newton had a very wise saying : ' Here is a 



204 -^^^^ Chimncy-Corncr. 

man trying to fill a bushel with chaff. Now if I fill it 
with wheat first, it is better than to fight him.' This 
apothegm contains in it the whole of what I would say 
on the subject of amusements." 



IX. 

DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS. 

THE door of my study being open, I heard in the 
distant parlor a sort of flutter of silken wings, 
and chatter of bird-like voices, which told me that a 
covey of Jennie's pretty young street birds had just 
alighted there. I could not forbear a peep at the rosy 
faces that glanced out under pheasants' tails, doves' 
wings, and nodding humming-birds, and made one or 
two errands in that direction only that I might gratify 
my eyes with a look at them. 

Your nice young girl, of good family and good 
breeding, is always a pretty object, and, for my part, I 
regularly lose my heart (in a sort of figurative way) to 
every fresh, charming creature that trips across my 
path. All their mysterious rattle-traps and whirligigs, 

— their curls and networks and crimples and rimples 
and crisping-pins, — their little absurdities, if you will, 

— have to me a sort of charm, like the tricks and 
stammerings of a curly-headed child. I should have 



2o6 The Chimney-Corner. 

made a very poor censor if I had been put in Cato's 
place : the witches would have thrown all my wisdom 
into some private chip-basket of their own, and walked 
off with it in triumph. Never a girl bows to me that 
I do not see in her eye a twinkle of confidence that 
she could, if she chose, make an old fool of me. I 
surrender at discretion on first sight. 

Jennie's friends are nice girls, — the flowers of good, 
staid, sensible families, — not heathen blossoms nursed 
in the hot-bed heat of wdld, high-flying, fashionable 
society. They have been duly and truly taught and 
brought up, by good mothers and painstaking aunties, 
to understand in their infancy that handsome is that 
handsome does ; that little girls must not be vain of 
their pretty red shoes and nice curls, and must remem- 
ber that it is better to be good than to be handsome ; 
with all other wholesome truisms of the kind. They 
have been to school, and had their minds improved in 
all modern ways, — have calculated eclipses, and read 
Virgil, Schiller, and La Fontaine, and understand all 
about the geological strata, and the different systems 
of metaphysics, — so that a person reading the list of 
their acquirements might be a little appalled at the 
prospect of entering into conversation wath them. 
For all these reasons I listened quite indulgently to 
the animated conversation that was going on about 
— Well ! 



Dress. 207 

What do girls generally talk about, when a knot of 
them get together ? Not, I believe, about the sources 
of the Nile, or the precession of the equinoxes, or the 
nature of the human understanding, or Dante, or 
Shakespeare, or Milton, although they have, learned 
all about them in school ; but upon a theme much 
nearer and dearer, — the one all-pervading feminine 
topic ever since Eve started the first toilet of fig- 
leaves ; and as I caught now and then a phrase of 
their chatter, I jotted it down in pure amusement, 
giving to each charming speaker the name of the bird 
under whose colors she was sailing. 

"For my part," said little Humming-Bird, "I'm 
quite worn out with sewing; the fashions are all so 
different from what they were last year, that everything 
has to be made over." 

"Isn't it dreadful!" said Pheasant. "There's 
my new mauve silk dress ! it was a very expensive 
silk, and I have n't worn it more than three or four 
times, and it really looks quite dowdy ; and I can't 
get Patterson to do it over for me for this party. 
Well, really, I shall have to give up company because 
I have nothing to wear." 

" Who does set the fashions, I wonder," said Hum- 
ming-Bird ; " they seem nowadays to whirl faster and 
faster, till really they don't leave one time for any- 
thing." 



2o8 The Chimney-Corncr. 

" Yes," said Dove, " I have n't a moment for read- 
ing, or drawing, or keeping up my music. The fact is, 
nowadays, to keep one's self properly dressed is all 
one can do. If I were gramie da?ne now, and had 
only to send an order to my milliner and dressmaker, 
I might be beautifully dressed all the time without 
giving much thought to it myself; and that is what 1 
should like. But this constant planning about one's 
toilet, changing your buttons and your fringes and 
your bonnet-trimmings and your hats eveiy other day, 
and then being behindhand ! It is really too fa- 
tiguing." 

" Well," said Jennie, " I never pretend to keep up. 
I never expect to be in the front rank of fashion, but 
no girl wants to be behind every one ; nobody wants 
to have people say, * Do see what an old-times, rub- 
bishy looking creature that is.' And now, with my 
small means and my conscience, (for I have a con- 
science in this matter, and don't wish to spend any 
more time and money than is needed to keep one's 
self fresh and tasteful,) I find my dress quite a fa- 
tiguing care." 

" Well, now, girls," said Humming-Bird, " do you 
really know, I have sometimes thought I should like 
to be a nun, just to get rid of all this labor. If I 
once gave up dress altogether, and knew I was to 
have nothing but one plain robe tied round my waist 



» * Dress, 209 

with a cord, it does seem to me as if it would be a 
perfect repose, — only one is a Protestant, you know." 

Now, as Humming-Bird was the most notoriously 
dressy individual in the little circle, this suggestion 
was received with quite a laugh. But Dove took it 
up. 

"Well, really," she said, "when dear Mr. S 

preaches those saintly sermons to us about our bap- 
tismal vows, and the nobleness of an unworldly life, 
and calls on us to live for something purer and higher 
than we are living for, I confess that sometimes all 
my life seems to me a mere sham, — that I am going 
to church, and saying solemn words, and being wrought 
up by solemn music, and uttering most solemn vows 
and prayers, all to no purpose ; and then I come away 
and look at my life, all resolving itself into a fritter 
about dress, and sewing-silk, cord, braid, and buttons, 
— the next fashion of bonnets, — how to make my 
old dresses answer instead of new, — how to keep the 
air of the world, while in my heart I am cherishing 
something higher and better. If there 's anything I 
detest it is hypocrisy ; and sometimes the life I lead 
looks like it. But how to get out of it ? what to do ? " 

" I 'm sure," said Humming-Bird, " that taking care 
of my clothes and going into company is, frankly, all 
I do. If I go to parties, as other girls do, and make 
calls, and keep dressed, — you know papa is not rich, 

N 



210 The Chimitey-Corner. s 

and one must do these things economically, — it 
really does take all the time I have. When I was 
confirmed the Bishop talked to us so sweetly, and I 
really meant sincerely to be a good girl, — to be as 
good as I knew how ; but now, ^vhen they talk about 
fighting the good fight and running the Christian race, 
I feel very mean and little, for I am quite sure this 
is n't doing it. But what is, — and who is ? " 

" Aunt Betsey Titcomb is doing it, I suppose," said 
Pheasant. 

" Aunt Betsey ! " said Humming-Bird, " well, she 
is. She spends all her money in doing good. She 
goes round visiting the poor all the time. She is a 
perfect saint ; — but O girls, how she looks ! Well, 
now, I confess, when I think I must look like Aunt 
Betsey, my courage gives out. Is it necessary to go 
without hoops, and look like a dipped candle, in order 
to be unworldly ? Must one wear such a fright of a 
bonnet ? " 

" No," said Jennie, " I think not. I think Miss 
Betsey Titcomb, good as she is, injures the cause of 
goodness by making it outwardly repulsive. I really 
think, if she would take some pains with her dress, 
and spend upon her own wardrobe a little of the 
money she gives away, that she might have influence 
in leading others to higher aims ; now all her influ- 
ence is against it. Her outre and repulsive exterior 



Dress. 2 1 1 

arrays our natural and innocent feelings against good- 
ness ; for surely it is natural and innocent to wish to 
look well, and I am really afraid a great many of us 
are more afraid of being thought ridiculous than of 
being wicked." 

" And after all," said Pheasant, " you know Mr. St. 
Clair says, ' Dress is one of the fine arts,' and if it 
is, why of course ^ve ought to cultivate it. Certainly, 
well-dressed men and women are more agreeable ob- 
jects than rude and unkempt ones. There must be 
somebody whose mission it is to preside over the 
agreeable arts of life ; and I suppose it falls to ' us 
girls.' That 's the way I comfort myself, at all events. 
Then I must confess that I do like dress j I'm not 
cultivated enough to be a painter or a poet, and I have 
all my artistic nature, such as it is, in dress. I love 
harmonies of color, exact shades and matches ; I love 
to see a uniform idea carried all through a woman's 
toilet, — her dress, her bonnet, her gloves, her shoes, 
her pocket-handkerchief and cuffs, her very parasol, 
all in correspondence." 

" But my dear," said Jennie, " anything of this kind 
must take a fortune ! " 

" And if I had a fortune, I 'm pretty sure I should 
spend a good deal of it in this way," said Pheasant. 
" I can imagine such completeness of toilet as I have 
never seen. How I would like the means to show 



212 TJu- CJi'unucy-ConuT. 

what I could do ! Aly life, now, is perpetual disquiet. 
I always feel shabby. My things must all be bought 
at hap-ha/ard, as they can be got out of my poor little 
allowance, — and things are getting so horridly dear ! 
Only think of it, girls ! gloves at two and a quarter ! 
and boots at seven, eight, and ten dollars ! and then, 
as you say, the fashions changing so ! Why, I bought 
a sack last fall and gave forty dollars for it, and this 
winter I 'm wearing it, to be sure, but it has no style 
at all, — looks quite antiquated ! " 

*'Now I say," said Jennie, " that you are really mor- 
bid on the subject of dress ; you are fiistidious and par- 
ticular and exacting in your ideas in a way that really 
ought to be put down. There is not a girl of our 
set that dresses as nicely as you do, except Kmma Sey- 
ton, and her father, you know, has no end of income." 

" Nonsense, Jennie," said Pheasant. " I think I 
really look like a beggar ; but then, I bear it as well 
as I can, because, you see, I know papa docs all for us 
he can, and I won't be extravagant. Put I do think, 
as Humming-Bird says, that it woukl be a great relief 
to give it up altogether and retire from the world ; or, 
as Cousin John says, climb a tree and pull it up after 
you, and so be in peace." 

" Well," said Jennie, " all this seems to have come 
on since the war. It seems to me that not only has 
everything doubled in price, but all the habits of the 



Dress. 2 1 3 

world seem to require that you shall have double the 
quantity of everything. Two or three years ago a 
good balmoral skirt was a fixed fact ; it was a conven- 
ient thing for sloppy, unpleasant weather. But now, 
dear me ! there is no end to them. They cost fifteen 
and twenty dollars ; and girls that I know have one 
or two every season, besides all sorts of quilled and 
embroidered and ruffled and tucked and flounced ones. 
Then, in dressing one's hair, what a perfect overflow 
there is of all manner of waterfalls, and braids, and 
rats and mice, and curls, and combs ; when three or 
four years ago we combed our own hair innocently 
behind our ears, and put flowers in it, and thought we 
looked nicely at our evening parties ! I don't believe 
we look any better now, when we are dressed, than 
we did then, — so what 's the use 'i " 

" Well, did you ever see such a tyranny as this of 
fashion 1 " said Humming-Bird. " We know it 's silly, 
but we all bow down before it ; we are afraid of our 
lives before it ; and who makes all this and sets it 
going ? The Paris milliners, the Empress, or who ? " 

" The question where fashions come from is like the 
question where pins go to," said Pheasant. *' Think 
of the thousands and millions of pins that are being 
used every year, and not one of them worn out. 
Where do they all go to ? One would expect to find 
a pin mine somewhere." 



214 ^'^'^' CJiivnicy-Conicr. 

" Victor Hugo says they go into the sewers in 
Paris," said Jennie. 

*' And the fiishions come from a source about as 
pure," said I, from the next room. 

" Bless me, Jennie, do tell us if your father has been 
listening to us all this time ! " was the next exclama- 
tion ; and forthwith there was a wliir and rustic of 
the silken wings, as the whole troop lluttercd into my 
study. 

'' Now, INIr. Crowfield, you are too bad ! " said 
Humming-Bird, as she perched upon a corner of my 
study-table, and put her little feet upon an old " Frois- 
sart " which filled the arm-chair. 

" To be listening to our nonsense ! " said Pheas- 
ant. 

" Lying in wait for us ! " said Dove. 

"Well, now, you have brought us all down on 
you," said Humming-Bird, " and you won't find it so 
easy to be rid of us. You will have to answer all our 
questions." 

" My dears, I am at your service, as far as mortal 
man may be," said I. 

"Well, then," said Humming-Bird, "tell us all 
about everything, — how things come to be as they 
are. Who makes the fashions ? " 

" I believe it is universally admitted that, in the 
matter of feminine toilet, France rules die world," 
said I. 



Dress. 2 1 5 

" But who rules France ? " said Pheasant. " Who 
decides what the fasliions shall be there ? " 

" It is the great misfortune of the civilized world, 
at the present hour," said I, " that the state of mor- 
als in France is apparently at the very lowest ebb, 
and consequently the leadership of fashion is entirely 
in the hands of a class of women who could not be 
admitted into good society, in any country. Women 
who can never have the name of wife, — who know 
none of the ties of family, — these are the dictators 
whose dress and equipage and appointments give the 
law, first to France, and through France to the civil- 
ized world. Such was the confession of Monsieur 
Dupin, made in a late speech before the French Sen- 
ate, and acknowledged, with murmurs of assent on all 
sides, to be the truth. This is the reason why the 
fashions have such an utter disregard of all those 
laws of prudence and economy which regulate the 
expenditures of families. They arc made by women 
whose sole and only hold on life is personal attrac- 
tiveness, and with whom to keep this up, at any cost, 
is a desperate necessity. No moral quality, no asso- 
ciation of purity, truth, modesty, self-denial, or family 
love, comes in to hallow the atmosphere about them, 
and create a sphere of loveliness which brightens as 
mere physical beauty fades. The ravages of tim.e and 
dissipation must be made up by an unceasing study of 



2i6 The Chimnty-Corner, 

the arts of the toilet. Artists of all sorts, moving in 
their train, rack all the stores of ancient and nuxlern 
art for the picturesque, the Ja//lini;-, the grotes^iue ; 
and so, lest these Circes of society should carry all 
before them, and enchant ever}- husband, l^rother, and 
lover, the. staid and lawful Tenelopes leave the hearth 
and home to follow in their triumphal march anvl inii 
tate their arts. Thus it goes in France ; and in luig 
land, virtuous and domestic princesses and peeresses 
must take obediently what has been decreed by their 
rulers in the ikmi-monde of France ; and we in 
America have leaders oi fashion, who make it their 
pride and glory to turn New York into Paris, and to 
keep even step with everything that is going on there. 
So the whole world of woman-kind is marching under 
the conunand ^^{ these leaders. The love of dress 
and glitter and iiishion is getting to be a morbid, un- 
healthy epidemic, which really eats away the noble- 
ness and purity of women. 

"In France, as INlonsieur Dupin, F-dmond About, 
and Michelet tell us, the extravagant demands of 
love for dress lead women to contract debts unknown 
to their husbands, and sign obligations which are paid 
by the sacrifice of honor, and thus the purity of the 
fiimily is continually undermined. In Fngland there 
is a voice of complaint, sounding from the leailing 
periodicals, that the extravagant demands of female 



Dress. 2 1 7 

fashion are bringing distress into families, and making 
marriages impossible; and something of the same sort 
seems to have begun here. We are across the Atlan- 
tic, to be sure ; but we feel the swirl and drift of the 
great whirlpool ; only, fortunately, we are far enough 
off to be able to see whither things are tending, and 
to stop ourselves if we will. 

" We have just come through a great struggle, in 
which our women have borne an heroic part, — have 
shown themselves capable of any kind of endurance 
and self-sacrifice ; and now we arc in that reconstruc- 
tive state which makes it of the greatest consequence 
to ourselves and the world that we understand our 
own institutions and position, and learn that, instead 
of following the corrupt and worn-out ways of the Old 
World, we are called on to set the example of a new 
state of society, — noble, simple, pure, and religious ; 
and women can do more towards this even than men, 
for women are the real architects of society. 

" Viewed in this light, even the small, frittering 
cares of woman's life — the attention to buttons, trim- 
mings, thread, and sewing-silk — may be an expres- 
sion of their patriotism and their religion. A noble- 
hearted woman puts a noble meaning into even the 
commonplace details of Hfe. The women of America 
can, if they choose, hold back their country from fol- 
lowing in the wake of old, corrupt, worn-out, effeminate 



2i8 The Chimney-Corner. 

European society, and make America the leader of 
the world in all that is good." 

" I 'm sure," said Humming-Bird, " we all would 
like to be noble and heroic. During the war, I did so 
long to be a man ! I felt so poor and insignificant 
because I was nothing but a girl ! " 

" Ah, well," said Pheasant, " but then one wants to 
do something worth doing, if one is going to do any- 
thing. One would like to be grand and heroic, if one 
could ; but if not, why try at all ? One wants to be 
very something, very great, very heroic ; or if not that, 
then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is 
this everlasting mediocrity that bores me." 

" Then, I suppose, you agree with the man we read 
of, who buried his one talent in the earth, as hardly 
worth caring for." 

"To say the truth, I always had something of a 
sympathy for that man," said Pheasant. "I can't 
enjoy goodness and heroism in homoeopathic doses. 
I want something appreciable. What I can do, being 
a woman, is a very different thing from what I should 
try to do if I were a man, and had a man's chances : 
it is so much less — so poor — that it is scarcely 
worth trying for." 

" You remember," said I, " the apothegm of one of 
the old divines, that if two angels were sent down 
from heaven, the one to govern a kingdom, and the 



Dress. 



2ig 



other to sweep a street, they would not feel any dis- 
position to change works." 

" AVell, that just shows that they are angels, and 
not mortals," said Pheasant ; " but we poor human 
beings see things differently." 

" Yet, my child, what could Grant or Sherman have 
done, if it had not been for the thousands of brave 
privates who were content to do each their impercep- 
tible little, — if it had not been for the poor, unno- 
ticed, faithful, never-failing common soldiers, who did 
the work and bore the suffering > No one man saved 
our country, or could save it; nor could the men 
have saved it without the women. Every mother that 
said to her son. Go ; every wife that strengthened the 
hands of her husband j every girl who sent courageous 
letters to her betrothed ; every woman who worked 
for a fair ; every grandam whose trembling hands knit 
stockings and scraped lint ; every little maiden who 
hemmed shirts and made comfort-bags for soldiers, — 
each and all have been the joint doers of a great 
heroic work, the doing of which has been the regen- 
eration of our era. A whole generation has learned 
the luxury of thinking heroic thoughts and being con- 
versant with heroic deeds, and I have faith to believe 
that all this is not to go out in a mere crush of fash- 
ionable luxury and folly and frivolous emptiness, — 
but that our girls are going to merit the high praise 



220 The CJdmney-Comer. 

given us by De Tocqueville, when he placed first 
among the causes of our prosperity the noble character 
of Atnerican women. Because fooHsh female persons 
in New York are striving to outdo the demi-monde of 
Paris in extravagance, it must not follow that every 
sensible and patriotic matron, and every nice, modest 
young girl, must forthwith, and without inquiry, rush 
as far after them as they possibly can. Because Mrs. 
Shoddy opens a ball in a two-thousand-dollar lace 
dress, every girl in the land need not look with shame 
on her modest white muslin. Somewhere between 
the fast women of Paris and the daughters of Christian 
American families there should be established a cor- 
don saftitaire, to keep out the contagion of manners, 
customs, and habits with which a noble-minded, re- 
ligious democratic people ought to have nothing to 
do." 

" Well now, Mr. Crowfield," said the Dove, " since 
you speak us so fair, and expect so much of us, we 
must of course try not to fall below your compli- 
ments ; but, after all, tell us what is the right standard 
about dress. Now we have daily lectures about this 
at home. Aunt Maria says that she never saw such 
times as these, when mothers and daughters, church- 
members and worldly people, all seem to be going 
one way, and sit down together and talk, as they will, 
on dress and fashion, — how to have this made and 



Dress. 22 1 

thflt altered. We used to be taught, she said, that 
church-members had higher things to think of, — that 
their thoughts ought to be fixed on something better, 
and that they ought to restrain the vanity and world- 
liness of children and young people ; but now, she 
says, even before a girl is born, dress is the one thing 
needful, — the great thing to be thought of; and so, 
in every step of the way upward, her little shoes, and 
her little bonnets, and her little dresses, and her 
corals and her ribbons, are constantly being discussed 
in her presence, as the one all-important object of 
life. Aunt Maria thinks mamma is dreadful, because 
she has maternal yearnings over our toilet successes 
and fortunes ; and we secretly think Aunt Maria is 
rather soured by old age, and has forgotten how a girl 
feels." 

" The fact is," said I, " that the love of dress and 
outside show has been always such an exacting and 
absorbing tendency, that it seems to have furnished 
work for religionists and economists, in all ages, to 
keep it within bounds. Various religious bodies, at 
the outset, adopted severe rules in protest against it. 
The Quakers and the Methodists prescribed certain 
fixed modes of costume as a barrier against its frivoli- 
ties and follies. In the Romish Church an entrance 
on any religious order prescribed entire and total 
renunciation of all thought and care for the beautiful 



222 The Chimncy-Conicr. 

in person or apparel, as the fust step towards saint- 
ship. The costume of the reli^ieusc seemed to be 
purposely intended to imitate the shroudings and 
swath ings of a corpse and the lugubrious color of a 
pall, so as forever to remind the wearer t^iat she was 
dead to the world of ornament and physical beauty. 
All great Christian preachers and reformers have 
levelled their artillery against the toilet, from the time 
of St. Jerome downward ; and Tom Moore has put 
into beautiful and graceful verse St. Jerome's admoni- 
tions to the fair church-goers of his time. 

«WIIO IS THE MAID? 

*ST. JEROME'S LOVE. 

* Who is the maid my spirit seeks, 

Through cold reproof and slander's blight ? 
Has she Love's roses on her cheeks ? 

Is hers an eye of this world's light ? 
No : wan and sunk with midnight prayer 

Are the pale looks of her I love ; 
Or if, at times, a light be there, 

Its beam is kindled from above. 

* I chose not her, my heart's elect, 

From those who seek their ]\Iaker*s shrine 
In gems and garlands proudly decked, 

As if themselves were things divine. 
No: Heaven but faintly warms the breast 

That beats beneath a broidered veil ; 



Dress. 223 

And she who comes in glittering vest 
To mourn her frailty still is frail. 

* Not so the faded form I prize 

And love, because its bloom is gone ; 
The glory in those sainted eyes 

Is all the grace her brow puts on. 
And ne'er was Ijcauty's dawn so bright, 

So touching, as that form's decay, 
Which, like the altar's trembling light. 

In holy lustre wastes away.' 

" But the defect of all these modes of warfare on 
the elegances and refinements of the toilet was that 
they were too indiscriminate. They were in reality 
founded on a false principle. They took for granted 
that there was something radically corrupt and wicked 
in the body and in the physical system. According 
to this mode of viewing things, the body was a loath- 
some and pestilent prison, in which the soul was 
locked up and enslaved, and the eyes, the ears, the 
taste, the smell, were all so many corrupt traitors in 
conspiracy to poison her. Physical beauty of every 
sort was a snare, a Circean enchantment, to be 
valiantly contended with and straitly eschewed. 
Hence they preached, not moderation, but total 
abstinence from all pursuit of physical grace and 
beauty. 

*' Now, a resistance founded on an over-statement 



224 TJic CJi'uiuicy-ConuT. 

is constantly tending to reaction. People always 
have a tendency to begin thinking for themselves \ 
and when they so think, they perceive tliat a good 
and wise God would not have framed our bodies with 
such exquisite care only to corrupt our squIs, — that 
physical beauty, being created in such profuse abun- 
dance around us, and we being possessed with such a 
longing- for it, must have its uses, its legitimate sphere 
of exercise. Even the poor, shrouded nun, as she 
walks the convent garden, cannot help asking herself 
why, if the .crimson velvet of the rose was made by 
God, all colors except black and white are sinful for 
her ; and the modest Quaker, after hanging all her 
house and dressing all her children in drab, cannot 
but marvel at the sudden outstreaking of blue and 
yellow and crimson in the tulip-beds under her win- 
dow, and reflect how very differently the great All- 
Father arrays the world's housekeeping. The conse- 
quence of all this has been, that the reforms based 
upon these severe and exclusive views have gradually 
gone backward. The Quaker dress is imperceptibly 
and gracefully melting away into a refined simplicity 
of modern costume, which in many cases seems to be 
the perfection of taste. The obvious reflection, that 
one color of the rainbow is quite as much of God as 
another, has led the children of gentle dove-colored 
mothers to appear in shades of rose-color, blue, and 



Dress. 225 

lilac ; and wise elders have said, it is not so much the 
color or the shape that we object to, as giving too 
much time and too much money, — if the heart be 
right with God and man, the bonnet ribbon may be 
of any shade you please." 

" But don't you think," said Pheasant, " that a cer- 
tain fixed dress, marking the unworldly character of 
a religious order, is desirable ? Now, I have said 
before that I am very fond of dress. I have a passion 
for beauty and completeness in it ; and as long as I 
am in the world and obliged to dress as the world 
does, it constantly haunts me, and tempts me to give 
more time, more thought, more money, to these 
things than I really think they are worth. But I can 
conceive of giving up this thing altogether as being 
much easier than regulating it to the precise point. 
I never read of a nun's taking the veil, without a 
certain thrill of sympathy. To cut off one's hair, to 
take off and cast from her, one by one, all one's 
trinkets and jewels, to lie down and have the pall 
thrown over one, and feel one's self, once for all, dead 
to the world, — I cannot help feeling as if this were 
real, thorough, noble renunciation, and as if one 
might rise up from it with a grand, calm consciousness 
of having risen to a higher and purer atmosphere, 
and got above all the littlenesses and distractions 
that beset us here. So I have heard charming young 



226 The Chimucy-Coma', 

Quaker girls, who. in nuMo thoughtless d.iys, indulged 
in what for them was a slight shading of worldly 
conforn\ity. say that it was to them a Messed rest 
when they \\\\ on the soiel. |>lait\ dress, and lelt that 
thev reallv had takei\ up the eross and tununl their 
baeks on the world. I ean eoneeive i>f doing this, 
mueh more easily than I ean ot' striking the exaet line 
between worldly eontorniity and noble aspiration, in 
the lite I live now." 

"My dear ehiUl," saivl 1. "we all overlook one 
great leading ]M-ineiple of our nature. .\nd that is, that 
we are made to lind a hi;;her pleasure in self saeritice 
than in anv t'orm <^{ self indulgenee. There is some 
thing grand and pathetie in the idea k^\. aw entire self- 
surrender, to whieh everv human soul leaps up. as wo 
do to the sound of n^irtial nuisie. 

** How manv bovs o\ boston and New York, who 
had lived effeminate and idle lives, lelt this new power 
uprising in them in our war! How they enU)raeed 
the dirt and diseomfort and fitigue and watehings and 
toils oi eamp life with an eagerness o\. .--est whieh thev 
had never felt in the pmsuit o{ mere ple.isure. and 
wrote home bvuning letters that they never were so 
hai^jn' in their lives ! It was not that dirt and fatigue 
and diseomlbrt and watehings and weariness were in 
themselves agreeable, but it was a jov to teel them- 
selves able to bear all and surnnuler all for somethini:- 



Dress. 227 

liiglicr than hclf. Many a poor IhiUiry bully of \';w 
Vork, many a Hircj-A rowrly, felt upiiru;rj by the djv 
covrjy \.]i;ix h': too lia'J hid away under the dirt and 
du ,f of \tr. i'jiui'-.r hfc this divine and prccioas jeweL 
if': l':apf:d if)r joy to fifid that hc too could be a hero. 
'liiink of til'; hunr]r';d?> of thousands of plain, ordi- 
nary v/r>rkjfi;Mn':fi, arjrj f^f rjcemingly ordinary boys, 
v/)io, hut. i(jr rjjoh a f.risis, might have passed through 
life never knowin;.^ tlii'j to he in them, and who cou- 
rageously endured huw^nr and tfiirst and cold, and 
separat.jfjfi U<)]i\ dcarc-t frifrnd,, for days and weeks 
afjd mout.h',, \v}j':n tli'-.y miVfjt,, at ariy day, Ijave 
bought a respite l^y deserting their country's flag! 
Starving hoys, sick at heart, di/zy in head, joining for 
home anfl mother, still found warmth and eomfort in 
the oii<: t.hourdif. tjjat t.hf;y could suffer, (Wc,^ i(jr their 
country ; and the graves at Salisbury and Anderson- 
ville show in how many souls this noble power of self- 
sacrifice to tlie higiier good was lodged, — how many 
thf;re v/ere, even in tlie Injrnblest walks of life, who 
jjreferred death by torture to life in dishonor. 

" It is this heroic element in man and v/ornan that 
makes self-sacrifice an ennobling and purifying ordeal 
in any religious profession, 'llie man really is taken 
into a higher region of his own nature, and finds a 
pleasure in the exercise of higher faculties which he 
did not suppose himself to possess. Whatever sacri- 



22$ The Chimnty~C enter. 

fice is supposed to bo duty, whothor the supposition 
be really correct or not, has in it an ennobling and 
puritying power : and thus the eras of conversion 
trom one form of the Christian religion to anoilier are 
often marked with a real and permanent t>xaltation of 
the whole character. But it does not follow that cer- 
tain religious beliets and ordinances are in themselves 
just, because they thus touch the great heroic n\aster- 
chord of the human soul. To wear sackcloth and 
sleep on a plank may have been of use to many souls, 
as symbolizing the awakening of this higher nature ; 
but, still, the religion of the New Testament is plainly 
one which calls to no such outward and evident sacri- 
fices. 

"It was John the Riptist, and not the Messiah, 
who dwelt in the wilderness and wore garments oi 
camel's hair; and Jesus was couunented on, not for 
his asceticism, but for his cheerful, social acceptance 
of the average innocetU wants and enjoyments of hu- 
manity. 'The Son of man came eating and drinking.' 
The great, and never ceasing, and utter self sacritice 
of his life was not signified by any peculiarity of cos- 
tume, or langUvige, or manner ; it showed itself only 
as it unconsciously welled up in all his words and 
actions, in his estimates oX life, in all that marked him 
out as a being of a higher and holier sphere." 

"Thonvoudo not believe in influcncins; this sub- 



Dress. 229 

ject of dress by religious persons' adopting any par- 
ticular laws of costume ? " said Pheasant. 

" I do not see it to be possible," said I, '' consider- 
ing how society is made up. 'i'here are such differ- 
ences of taste and character, — people move in such 
different spheres, are influenced by such different cir- 
cumstances, — that all we can do is to lay down cer- 
tain great principles, and leave it to every one to 
apply them according to individual needs." 

" Jiut what are these principles ? There is the 
grand inquiry," 

" Well," said I, " let us feel our way. In the first 
place, then, we are all agreed in one starting-point, — 
that beauty is not to be considered as a bad thing, — 
that the love of ornament in our outward and phys- 
ical life is not a sinful or a dangerous feeling, and only 
leads to evil, as all other innocent things do, by being 
used in wrong ways. So far we are all agreed, are we 
not ? " 

" Certainly," said all the voices. 

" It is, therefore, neither wicked nor silly nor weak- 
minded to like beautiful dress, and all that goes to 
make it up. Jewelry, diamonds, pearls, emeralds, 
rubies, and all sorts of pretty things that are made of 
them, are as lawful and innocent objects of admiration 
and desire, as flowers or birds or butterflies, or the 
tints of evening skies. Gems, in fact, are a species 



2^0 The OiimtKy-Corncr. 

of mineral flower ; they are the blossoms of the dark, 
hard mine ; and \Yhat they want in perfume they make 
up in durability. The best Christian in the world 
mav, without the least inconsistency, admire tiiem, and 
sav, as a charming, benevolent old Quaker lady once 
said to me, ' I do so love to look at beautiful jewelry! ' 
The love of beautiful dress, in itself, therefore, so far 
from being in a bad sense worldly, may be the same 
indication o{ a ret'med and poetical nature that is 
given by the love of llowers and of natural objects. 

'' In the third place, there is nothing in itself wrong, 
or unworthy a rational being, in a certain degree of 
attention to the flishion of society in our costume. It 
is not wiong to be annoyed at unnecessary departures 
from the commonly received practices of good society 
in the matter of the arrangement of our toilet ; and it 
would indicate rather an unamiable want of sympathy 
with our fellow-beings, if we were not willing, for the 
most part, to follow what they indicate to be agreeable 
in the disposition of our outward affairs." 

" Well, I must say, Mr. Crowfield, you are allowing 
us all a very generous margin," said Humming-Bird. 

" But, now," said I, " I am coming to the restric- 
tions. When is love of dress excessive and wrong ">. 
To this I answer by stating my fiiith in one of old 
Plato's ideas, in which he speaks of beauty and its 
uses. He says there were two impersonations of 



Dress. 231 

beauty worshipped under the name of Venus in the 
ancient times, — the one celestial, horn of the highest 
gods, the other earthly. To the earthly Venus the 
sacrifices were such as were more trivial ; to the celes- 
tial, such as were more holy. ' 'I'he worship of the 
earthly Venus,' he says, 'sends us oftentimes on un- 
worthy and trivial errands, but the worship of the 
celestial to high and lionorable friendships, to noble 
asjjirations and heroic actions.' 

" Now it seems to me that, if we bear in mind this 
truth in regard to beauty, we shall have a test with 
which to try ourselves in the matter of physical adorn- 
ment. We are always excessive when we sacrifice the 
higher beauty to attain the lower one. A woman who 
will .sacrifice domestic affection, conscience, self-re- 
sjject, honor, to love of dress, we all agree, loves dress 
too much. She loses the true and higher beauty of 
womanhood for the lower beauty of gems and flowers 
and colors. A girl who sacrifices to dress all her time, 
all her strength, all her money, to the neglect of the 
cultivation of her mind and heart, and to the neglect 
of the claims of others on her helpfulness, is sacrific- 
ing the higher to the lower beauty. Jler fault is not 
the love of beauty, but loving the wrong and inferior 
kind. 

" It is remarkable that the directions of Holy Writ, 
in regard to the female dress, should distinctly take 



232 The Chimney-Corner. 

note of this difference between the higher and the 
lower beauty which we find in the works of Plato. 
The Apostle gives no rule, no specific costume, which 
should mark the Christian woman from the Pagan; 
but says, * whose adorning, let it not be that outward 
adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, 
or of putting on of apparel ; but let it be the hidden 
man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, 
even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which 
is in the sight of God of great price.' The gold and 
gems and apparel are not forbidden ; but we are told 
not to depend on them for beauty, to the neglect of 
those imperishable, immortal graces that belong to the 
soul. The makers of fashion among whom Christian 
women lived when the Apostle wrote were the same 
class of brilliant and worthless Aspasias who make 
the fashions of modern Paris ; and all womankind 
was sunk into slavish adoration of mere physical 
adornment when the Gospel sent forth among them 
this call to the culture of a higher and immortal 
beauty. 

"In fine, girls," said I, "you may try yourselves by 
this standard. You love dress too much when you 
care more for your outward adorn ings than for your 
inward dispositions, — when it afilicts you more to 
have torn your dress than to have lost your temper, — 
when you are more troubled by an ill-fitting gown 



Dress. 233 

than by a neglected duty, — when you are less con- 
cerned at having made an unjust comment, or spread 
a scandalous report, than at having worn a passee bon- 
net, — when you are less troubled at the thought of 
being found at the last great feast without the wedding 
garment, than at being found at the party to-night in 
the fashion of last year. No Christian woman, as I 
view it, ought to give such attention to her dress as to 
allow it to take up all of three very important things, 
viz. : — 

All her time. 
All her strength. 
All her money. 
Whoever does this lives not the Christian, but the 
Pagan life, — worships not at the Christian's altar of 
our Lord Jesus, but at the shrine of the lower Venus 
of Corinth and Rome." 

"O now, Mr. Crowfield, you frighten me," said 
Humming-Bird. " I 'm so afraid, do you know, that 
I am doing exactly that." 

" And so am I," said Pheasant ; " and yet, certainly, 
it is not what I mean or intend to do." 

" But how to help it," said Dove. 

" My dears," said I, " where there is a will there is 
a way. Only resolve that you will put the true beauty 
first, — that, even if you do have to seem unfashion- 
able, you will follow the highest beauty of woman- 



234 l^he Chimney-Comer. 

hood, — and the battle is half gained. Only resolve 
that your time, your strength, your money, such as 
you have, shall not atl — nor more than half — be 
given to mere outward adornment, and you will go 
right. It requires only an army of girls animated 
with this noble purpose to declare independence in 
America, and emancipate us from the decrees and 
tyrannies of French actresses and ballet-dancers. En 
avaniy girls ! You yet can, if you will, save the repub- 
lic." 



X. 



WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY 
IN DRESS. 

THE conversation on dress which I had held with 
Jennie and her Httle covey of Birds of Paradise 
appeared to have worked in the minds of the fair 
council, for it was not long before they invaded my 
study again in a body. They were going out to a 
party, but called for Jennie, and of course gave me 
and Mrs. Crowfield the privilege of seeing them 
equipped for conquest. 

Latterly, I must confess, the mysteries of the toilet 
rites have impressed me with a kind of superstitious 
awe. Only a year ago my daughter Jennie had 
smooth dark hair, which she wreathed in various soft, 
flowing lines about her face, and confined in a clas- 
sical knot on the back of her head. Jennie had rather 
a talent for coiffure, and the arrangement of her hair 
was one of my little artistic delights. She always had 
something there, — a leaf, a spray, a bud or blossom, 
that looked fresh, and had a sort of poetical grace of 
its own. 



236 The Chimney-Comer. 

But in a gradual way all this has been changing. 
Jennie's him first became slightly wavy, then curly, 
finally frizzly, presenting a tumbled and twisted ap- 
pearance, which gave me great inward concern; but 
when I spoke upon the subject I was always laughing- 
ly silenced with the definitive settling remark : " O, 
it 's the fashion, papa ! Everybody wears it so." 

I particularly objected to the change on my own 
small account, because the smooth, breakfast-table 
coiffure, which I had always so much enjoyed, was 
now often exchanged for a peculiarly bristling appear- 
ance ; the hair being variously twisted, tortured, 
woven, and wound, without the least view to immedi- 
ate beauty or grace. But all this, I was informed, 
was the necessary means towards crimping for some 
evening display of a more elaborate nature than 
usual. 

Mrs. Crowfield and myself are not party-goers by 
profession, but Jennie insists on our going out at 
least once or twice in a season, just, as she says, to 
keep up with the progress of society; and at these 
times I have been struck with frequent surprise by the 
general untidiness which appeared to have come over 
the heads of all my female friends. I know, of 
course, that I am only a poor, ignorant, bewildered 
man-creature ; but to my uninitiated eyes they looked 
as if they had all, after a very restless and perturbed 



Sources of Beauty in Dress. 2^)7 

sleep, come out of bed without smoothing their tum- 
bled and disordered locks. Then, every young lady, 
without exception, seemed to have one kind of hair, 
and that the kind which was rather suggestive of the 
term woolly. Every sort of wild abandon of frowzy 
locks seemed to be in vogue ; in some cases the hair 
appearing to my vision nothing but a confused snarl, 
in which glittered tinklers, spangles, and bits of tin- 
sel, and from which waved long pennants and stream- 
ers of different-colored ribbons. 

I was in fact very greatly embarrassed by my first 
meeting with some very charming girls, whom I 
thought I knew as familiarly as my own daughter 
Jennie, and whose soft, pretty hair had often formed 
the object of my admiration. Now, however, they 
revealed themselves to me in coiffures which forcibly 
reminded me of the electrical experiments which used 
to entertain us in college, when the subject stood on 
the insulated stool, and each particular hair of his 
head bristled and rose, and set up, as it were, on its 
own account. This high-flying condition of the tress- 
es, and the singularity of the ornaments which ap- 
peared to be thrown at hap-hazard into them, suggest- 
ed so oddly the idea of a bewitched person, that I 
could scarcely converse with any presence of mind, 
or realize that these really were the nice, well-in- 
formed, sensible little girls of my own neighborhood, 



23 S TJic Chimncy-Conicr. 

— the good daughters, good sisters, Sunday-school 
teachers, and other familiar members of our best edu- 
cated circles ; and I came away from the party in a 
sort of blue maze, and hardly in a state to conduct 
myself with credit in the examination through which 
I knew Jennie would put me as to the appearance of 
her different friends. 

I know not how it is, but the glamour of f^ishion in 
the eyes of girlhood is so complete, that the oddest, 
wildest, most uncouth devices hnd grace and favor in 
tlie eyes of even well-bred girls, when once that invisi- 
ble, ineffable aura has breathed over them which de- 
clares them to be Hishionable. They may defy them 
for a time, — they may pronounce them horrid ; but 
it is with a secretly melting iieart, and with a mental 
reservation to look as nearly like the abhorred specta- 
cle as they possibly can on the tirst favorable opportu- 
nity. 

On the occasion of the visit referred to, Jennie 
ushered her three friends in triumph into my study ; 
and, in truth, the little room seemed to be perfectly 
transformed by their brightness. My honest, nice, 
lovable little Yankee-fireside girls were, to be sure, 
got up in a style that would have done credit to 
Madame Pompadour, or any of the most questionable 
characters of the time of Louis XIV. or XV. They 
were frizzled and powdered, and built up in elaborate 



Sources of Beauty in Dress. 239 

devices ; they wore on their hair flowers, gems, 
streamers, tinklers, humming-birds, butterflies, South 
American beetles, beads, bugles, and all imaginaljlc 
rattle-traps, vvliich jingled and clinked with every 
motion ; and yet, as they were three or four fresh, 
handsome, intelligent, bright-eyed girls, there was no 
•denying the fact that they did look extremely pretty ; 
and as they sailed hither and thither before me, and 
^7iLLQ,(\. down upon me in the saucy might of their rosy 
girlhood, there was a gay defiance in Jennie's demand, 
" Now, papa, how do you like us ? " 

" Very charming," answered I, surrendering at dis- 
cretion. 

" I told you, girls, that you could convert him to 
the fashions, if he shoujd once see you in party trim." 

" I beg pardon, my dear ; I am not converted to 
the fa.shion, but to you, and that is a point on which 
I did n't need conversion ; but the present fashions, 
even so fairly represented as I see them, I humbly 
confess I dislike." 

"O Mr. Crowfield!" 

" Yes, my dears, I do. But then, I protest, I 'm 
not fairly treated. I think, for a young American 
girl, who looks as most of my (air friends do look, to 
come down with her bright eyes and all her little pan- 
oply of graces upon an old fellow like me, and expect 
him to like a fashion merely because she looks well 



240 The CJiimney'-Corncr, 

in it, is all sheer nonsense. Why, girls, if you wore 
rings in your noses, and bangles on your arms up to 
your elbows, if you tied your hair in a war-knot on 
the top of your heads like the Sioux Indians, you 
would look pretty still. The question is n't, as I view 
it, whether you look pretty, — for that you do, and 
that you will, do what you please and dress how you 
will. The question is whether you might not look 
prettier, whether another style of dress, and another 
mode of getting up, would not be far more becoming. 
I am one who thinks that it would." 

" Now, Mr. Crowfield, you positively are too bad," 
said Humming-Bird, whose delicate head was encir- 
cled by a sort of crapy cloud of bright hair, sparkling 
with gold-dust and spangles, in the midst of which, 
just over her forehead, a gorgeous blue butterfly was 
perched, while a confused mixture of hairs, gold-pow- 
der, spangles, stars, and tinkling ornaments fell in a 
sort of cataract down her pretty neck. " You see, we 
girls think everything of you ; and now we don't like 
it that you don't like our fashions." 

*'Why, my little princess, so long as I like you 
better than your fashions, and merely think they 
are not worthy of you, what's the harm ?" 

" O yes, to be sure. You sweeten the dose to us 
babies with that sugar-plum. But really, Mr. Crow- 
field, why don't you like the fashions ? " 



Sources of Beauty in Dress. 241 

" Because, to my view, they arc in great part in 
false taste, and injure the l^eauty of the girls," said I. 
" They are inappropriate to their characters, and 
make them look like a kind and class of women 
whom they do not, and I trust never will, resemble 
internally, and whose mark therefore they ought not 
to bear externally. But there you are, beguiling me 
into a sermon which you will only hate me in your 
hearts for preaching. Go along, children ! You cer- 
tainly look as well as anybody can in that style of 
getting up ; so go to your party, and to-morrow night, 
when you are tired and sleepy, if you '11 come witli 
your crochet, and sit in my study, I will read you 
Christopher Crowfield's dissertation on dress." 

"That will be amusing, to say the least," said 
Humming-Bird ; " and, be sure, we will all be here. 
And mind, you have to show good reasons for dislik-" 
ing the present fashion." 

So the next evening there was a worsted party in 
my study, sitting in the midst of which I read as 
follows : 

" WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY IN DRESS. 

" The first one is appropriateness. Colors and 
forms and modes, in themselves graceful or beautiful, 
can become ungraceful and ridiculous simply through 
inappropriateness. The most lovely bonnet that the 



242 The Chiinncy-Corncr. 

most approved modiste can invent, if worn on the 
head of a coarse-faced Irishwoman bearing a market- 
basket on her arm, excites no emotion but that of the 
ljJ.icrous. The most elegant and brilliant evening 
dress, if worn in the daytime in a railroad car, strikes 
every one with a sense of absurdity ; whereas both 
these objects in appropriate associations would excite 
only the idea of beauty. So, a mode of dress obvi- 
ously intended for driving strikes us as outre in a par- 
lor j and a parlor dress would no less shock our eyes 
on horseback. In short, the course of this principle 
through all varieties of form can easily be perceived. 
Besides appropriateness to time, place, and circum- 
stances, there is appropriateness to age, position, and 
character. This is the foundation of all our. ideas of 
professional propriety in costume. One would not 
like to see a clergyman in his external air and appoint- 
ments resembling a gentleman of the turf; one would 
not wish a refined and modest scholar to wear the 
outward air of a fast fellow, or an aged and venerable 
statesman to appear with all the .peculiarities of a 
young dandy. The flowers, feathers, and furbelows 
which a light-hearted young girl of seventeen embel- 
lishes by the airy grace with which she wears them, 
are simply ridiculous when transferred to the toilet 
of her serious, well-meaning mamma, who bears them 
about with an anxious face, merely because a loqua- 



Soicrces of Beauty in Dress. 243 

cious milliner has assured her, with many protesta- 
tions, that it is the fashion, and the only thing remain- 
ing for her to do. 

"There are, again, modes of dress in themselves 
very beautiful and very striking, which are peculiarly 
adapted to theatrical representation and to pictures, 
but the adoption of which as a part of unprofessional 
toilet produces a sense of incongruity. A mode of 
dress may be in perfect taste on the stage, that would 
be absurd in an evening party, absurd in the street, 
absurd, in short, everywhere else. 

" Now you come to my first objection to our pres- 
ent American toilet, — its being to a very great extent 
inappf'opriaie to our climate, to our habits of life and 
thought, and to the whole structure of ideas on which 
our life is built. What we want, apparently, is some 
court of inquiry and adaptation that shall pass judg- 
ment on the fashions of other countries, and modify 
them to make them a graceful expression of our own 
national character, and modes of thinking and living. 
A certain class of women in Paris at this present hour 
makes the fashions that rule the feminine world. 
They are women who live only for the senses, with as 
utter and obvious disregard of any moral or intellect- 
ual purpose to be answered in living as a paroquet or 
a macaw^ They have no family ties ; love, in its pure 
domestic sense, is an impossibility in their lot ; re- 



244 ^/^^' CJiiDUicy-Conia'. 

ligion in any sense is another impossibility ; and their 
^Yhole intensity of existence, therefore, is concentrated 
on the question of sensuous enjoyment, and that 
personal adornment which is necessary to secure it. 
When the great, ruling country in the world of taste 
and fashion has fallen into such a state that the vir- 
tual leaders of fashion are women of this character, it 
is not to be supposed that the flishions emanating from 
them will be of a kind well adapted to express the 
ideas, the thoughts, the state of society, of a great 
Christian democracy such as ours ought to be. 

"What is called, for example, the Pompadour style 
of dress, so much in vogue of late, we can see to be 
perfectly adapted to the kind of existence led by dissi- 
pated women, whose life is one revel of excitement ; 
and who, never proposing to themselves any, intellect- 
ual employment or any domestic duty, can atTord to 
spend three or four hours every day under the hands 
of a waiting-maid, in alternately tangling and untang- 
ling their hair. Powder, paint, gold-dust and silver- 
dust, pomatums, cosmetics, are all perfectly appro- 
priate where the ideal of life is to keep up a false 
show of beauty after the true bloom is wasted by 
dissipation. The woman who never goes to bed till 
morning, who never even dresses herself, who never 
takes a needle in her hand, who never goes to church, 
and never entertains one serious idea of duty of any 



Sources of Beauty in Dress. 245 

kind, when got up in Pompadour style, has, to say 
the truth, the good taste and merit of appropriateness. 
Her dress expresses just what she is, — all false, all 
artificial, all meretricious and unnatural ; no part or 
portion of her from which it might be inferred what 
her Creator originally designed her to be. 

"But when a nice little American girl, who has 
been brought up to cultivate her mind, to refine her 
taste, to care for her health, to be a helpful daughter 
and a good sister, to visit the poor and teach in Sun- 
day schools ; when a good, sweet, modest little puss 
of this kind combs all her pretty hair backward till it 
is one mass of frowzy confusion ; when she powders, 
and paints under her eyes ; when she adopts, with 
eager enthusiasm, every outre^ unnatural fashion that 
comes from the most dissipated foreign circles, — she 
is in bad taste, because she does not represent either 
her character, her education, or her good points. 
She looks like a second-rate actress, when she is, in 
fact, a most thoroughly respectable, estimable, lovable 
little girl, and on the way, as we poor fellows fondly 
hope, to bless some one of us with her tenderness and 
care in some nice home in the future. 

" It is not the fashion in America for young girls to 

have waiting-maids, — in foreign countries it is the 

fashion. All this meretricious toilet — so elaborate, 

'SO complicated, and so contrar)^ to nature — must be 



246 Tlic CJihnncy-Corner. 

accomplished, and is accomplished, by the busy little 
fingers of each girl for herself; and so it seems to be 
very evident that a style of hair-dressing which it will 
require hours to disentangle, which must injure and 
in time ruin the natural beauty of the hair, ought to 
be one thing which a well-regulated court of inquiry 
would reject in our American fashions. 

" Again, the genius of American life is for simpli- 
city and absence of ostentation. We have no parade 
of office ; our public men wear no robes, no stars, 
garters, collars, &c. ; and it would, therefore, be in 
good taste in our women to cultivate simple styles of 
dress. Now I object to the present fashions, as 
adopted from France, that they are flashy and theatri- 
cal. Having their origin with a community whose 
senses are blunted, drugged, and deadened with dis- 
sipation and ostentation, they reject the simpler forms 
of beauty, and seek for startling effects, for odd and 
unexpected results. The contemplation of one of 
our fashionable churches, at the hour when its fair 
occupants pour forth, gives one a great deal of sur- 
prise. The toilet there displayed might have been 
in good keeping among showy Parisian women in an 
opera-house ; but even their original inventors would 
have been shocked at the idea of carrying them into 
a church. The rawness of our American mind as to 
the subject of propriety in dress is nowhere more 



Sources of Beauty in Dress. 247 

shown than in the fact that no apparent distinction is 
made between church and opera-house in the adapta- 
tion of attire. Very estimable, and, we trust, very 
rehgious young women sometimes enter the house of 
God in a costume which makes their utterance of the 
words of the litany and the acts of prostrate devotion 
in the service seem almost burlesque. When a brisk 
little creature comes into a pew with hair frizzed till 
it stands on end in a most startling manner, rattling 
strings of beads and bits of tinsel, mounting over all 
some pert little hat with a red or green feather stand- 
ing saucily upright in front, she may look exceedingly 
pretty and piguanie; and, if she came there for a 
game of croquet or a tableau-party, would be all in 
very good taste ; but as she comes to confess that 
she is a miserable sinner, that she has done the things 
she ought not to have done and left undone the things 
she ought to have done, — as she takes upon her lips 
most solemn and tremendous words, whose meaning 
runs far beyond life into a sublime eternity, — there 
is a discrepancy which would be ludicrous if it were 
not melancholy. 

" One is apt to think, at first view, that St. Jerome 
was right in saying, 

* She who comes in glittering veil 
To mourn her frailty, still is frail.' 

But St. Jerome was in the wrong, after all ; for a 



248 TJic CJiiinncy-Covncr. 

flashy, unsuitable attire in church is not always a 
mark of an undevout or entirely worldly mind ; it is 
simply a mark of a raw, uncultivated taste. In Italy, 
the ecclesiastical law prescribing a uniform black 
dress for the churches gives a sort of education to 
FAH-opean ideas of propriety in toilet, which prevents 
churches from being made theatres for the same kind 
of display which is held to be -in good taste at places 
of public amusement. It is but justice to the invent- 
ors of Parisian fashions to say, that, had they ever 
had the smallest idea of going to church and Sunday 
school, as our good girls do, they would immediately 
have devised toilets appropriate to such exigencies. 
If it were any part of their plan of life to appear 
statedly in public to confess themselves 'miserable 
sinners/ we should doubtless have sent over here the 
design of some graceful penitential habit, which would 
give our places of worship a much more appropriate 
air than they now have. As it is, it would form a 
subject for such a court of inquiry and adaptation as 
we have supposed, to draw a line between the cos- 
tume of the theatre and the church. 

" In the same manner, there is a want of appro- 
priateness in the costume of our American women, 
who display in the street promenade a style of dress 
and adornment originally intended for showy carriage 
drives in such great exhibition grounds as the Eois de 



Sources of Beauty in Dress. 249 

Boulogne. The makers of Parisian fashions are not 
generally walkers. They do not, with all their ex- 
travagance, have the bad taste to trail yards of silk 
and velvet over the mud and dirt of a pavement, 
or promenade the street in a costume so pronounced 
and striking as to draw the involuntary glance of 
every eye ; and the showy toilets displayed on the 
pave by American young women have more than once 
exposed them to misconstruction in the eyes of for- 
eign observers. 

*' Next to appropriateness, the second requisite to 
beauty in dress I take to be unity of effect. In 
speaking of the arrangement of rooms in the ' House 
and Home Papers,' I criticised some apartments 
wherein were many showy articles of furniture, and 
much expense had been incurred, because, with all 
this, there was no tmiiy of result. The carpet was 
costly, and in itself handsome ; the paper was also in 
itself handsome and costly ; the tables and chairs 
also in themselves very elegant ; and yet, owing to 
a want of any unity of idea, any grand harmonizing 
tint of color, or method of arrangement, the rooms 
had a jumbled, confused air, and nothing about them 
seemed particularly pretty or effective. I instanced 
rooms where thousands of dollars had been spent, 
which, because of this defect, never excited admira- 
tion ; and oth€rs in which the furniture w^s of the 
n* 



250 TJic CJiinniey-Corncr. 

cheapest description, but which always gave imme- 
diate and universal pleasure. The same rule holds 
good in dress. As in ever}' apartment, so in every 
toilet, there should be one ground tone or dominant 
color, which should rule all the others^ and there 
should be a general style of idea to which everything 
should be subjected. 

"We may illustrate the effect of this principle in a 
very familiar case. It is generally conceded that .the 
majority of women look better in mourning than they 
do in their ordinary apparel ; a comparatively plain 
person looks almost handsome in simple black. Now 
why is this ? Simply because mourning requires a 
severe uniformity of color and idea, and forbids the 
display of that variety of colors and objects which go 
to make up the ordinary female costume, and which 
very few women have such skill in using as to pro- 
duce really beautiful effects. 

"Very similar results have been attained by the 
Quaker costume, which, in spite of the quaint severity 
of the forms to which it adhered, has always had a 
remarkable degree of becomingness, because of its 
restriction to a few simple colors and to the absence 
of distracting ornament. 

" But the same effect which is produced in mourn- 
ing or the Quaker costume may be preserved in a 
style of dress admitting color and ornamentation. A 



Soui'ces of Beauty in Dress. 251 

dress may have the richest fulness of color, and still 
the tints may be so chastened and subdued as to 
produce the impression of a severe simplicity. Sup- 
pose, for example, a golden-haired blonde chooses for 
the ground-tone of her toilet a deep shade of purple, 
such as affords a good background for the hair and 
complexion. The larger draperies of the costume 
being of this color, the bonnet may be of a lighter 
shade of the same, ornamented with lilac hyacinths, 
shading insensibly towards rose- color. The effect of 
such a costume is simple, even though there be much 
ornament, because it is ornament artistically disposed 
towards a general result. 

" A dark shade of green being chosen as the 
ground-tone of a dress, the whole costume may, in 
like manner, be worked up through lighter and bright- 
er shades of green, in which rose-colored flowers may 
appear with the same impression of simple appro- 
priateness that is made by the pink blossom over the 
green leaves of a rose. There have been times in 
France when the study of color produced artistic 
effects in costume worthy of attention, and resulted 
in styles of dress of real beauty. But the present 
corrupted state of morals there has introduced a cor- 
rupt taste in dress ; and it is worthy of thought that 
the decline of moral purity in society is often marked 
by the deterioration of the sense of artistic beauty. 



252 The Chiinncy-Corncr. 

Corrupt and dissipated social epochs produce corrupt 
styles of architecture and corrupt styles of drawing 
and painting, as might easily be illustrated by the 
history of art. V/hen the leaders of society have 
blunted their finer perceptions by dissipation and 
immorality, they are incapable of feeling the beauties 
which come from delicate concords and truly artistic 
combinations. They verge towards barbarism, and 
require things that are strange, odd, dazzling, and 
peculiar to captivate their jaded senses. Such we 
take to be the condition of Parisian society now. 
The tone of it is given by women who are essentially 
impudent and vulgar, who override and overrule, by 
the mere brute force of opulence and luxur)', women 
of finer natures and moral tone. The court of France 
is a court of adventurers, of parvenus ; and the pal- 
aces, the toilets, the equipage, the entertainments, of 
the mistresses outshine those of the lawful wives. 
Hence comes a style of dress which is in itself vulgar, 
ostentatious, 'pretentious, without simplicity, without 
unity, seeking to dazzle by strange combinations and 
daring contrasts. 

"Now, when the fashions emanating from such a 
state of society come to our country, where it has 
been too much the habit to put on and wear, without 
dispute and without inquiry, any or everything that 
France sends, the results produced are often things to 



Sotirces of Bcmtty in Dress. 253 

make one wonder. A respectable man, sitting quietly 
in church or other public assembly, may be pardoned 
sometimes for indulging a silent sense of the ridic- 
ulous in the contemplation of the forest of bonnets 
which surround him, as he humbly asks himself the 
question, Were these meant to cover the head, to de- 
fend it, or to ornament it? and if they are intended 
for any of these purposes, how ? 

" I confess, to me nothing is so surprising as the 
sort of things which well-bred women serenely wear 
on their heads with the idea that they are ornaments. 
On my right hand sits a good-looking girl with a thing 
on her head which seems to consist mostly of bunches 
of grass, straws, with a confusion of lace, in which sits 
a draggled bird, looking as if the cat bad had him 
before the lady. In front of her sits another, who has 
a glittering confusion of beads swinging hither and 
thither from a jaunty little structure of black and red 
velvet An anxious-looking matron appears under 
the high eaves of a bonnet with a gigantic crimson 
rose crushed down into a mass of tangled hair. She 
is ornamented ! she has no doubt about it. 

"The fact is, that a style of dress which allows the 
use of everything in heaven above or earth beneath 
requires more taste and skill in disposition than falls 
to the lot of most of the female sex to make it even 
tolerable. In consequence, the flowers, fruits, grass, 



254 The CJiiinncy-Coriicr. 

hay, straw, oats, butterflies, beads, birds, tinsel, 
streamers, jinglers, lace, bugles, crape, which seem to 
be appointed to form a covering for the female head, 
very often appear in combinations so singular, and the 
results, taken in connection with all the rest of the 
costume, are such, that we really think the people 
who usually assemble in a Quaker meeting-house are, 
with their entire absence of ornament, more becom- 
ingly attired than the majority of our public audiences. 
For if one considers his own impression after having 
seen an assemblage of women dressed in Quaker cos- 
tume, he will find it to be, not of a confusion of twink- 
ling finery, but of many fair, sweet faces ^ of charming, 
nice-looking ivomen^ and not of articles of dress. 
Now this shows that the severe dress, after all, has 
better answered the true purpose of dress, in setting 
forth the laoman, than our modern costume, where 
the woman is but one item in a flying mass of colors 
and forms, all of which distract attention from the 
faces they are sui)posed to adorn. The dress of the 
Philadelphian ladies has always been celebrated for 
its elegance of effect, from the fact, probably, that 
the early Quaker parentage of the city formed the 
eye and the taste of its women for uniform and simple 
styles of color, and for purity and chastity of lines. 
The most perfect toilets that have ever been achieved 
in America have probably been those of the class 



Sources of Beauty in Dress. " 255 

familiarly called the gay Quakers, — children of Qua- 
ker families, who, while abandoning the strict rules 
of the sect, yet retain their modest and severe reti- 
cence, relying on richness of material, and soft, har- 
monious coloring, rather than striking and dazzling 
ornament. 

" The next source of beauty in dress is the impres- 
sion of truthfulness and reality. It is a well-known 
principle of the fine arts, in all their branches, that 
all shams and mere pretences are to be rejected, — a 
truth which Ruskin has shown with the full lustre of 
his many-colored prose-poetry. As stucco pretending 
to be marble, and graining pretending to be wood, 
are in false taste in building, so false jewelry and 
cheap fineries of every kind are in bad taste ; so also 
is powder instead of natural complexion, false hair 
instead of real, and flesh-painting of every description. 
I have even the hardihood to think and assert, in the 
presence of a generation whereof not one woman in 
twenty wears her own hair, that the simple, short- 
cropped locks of Rosa Bonheur are in a more beauti- 
ful style of hair-dressing than the most elaborate edi- 
fice of curls, rats, and waterfalls that is erected on 
any fair head now-a-days." 

" O Mr. Crowfield ! you hit us all now," cried sev- 
eral voices. 

" I know it, girls, — I know it. I admit that you 



256 * The CJiimncy-Corncr. 

are all looking very pretty; but I do maintain that 
you are none of you doing j^ourselves justice, and that 
Nature, if you would only follow her, would do better 
for you than all these elaborations. A short crop of 
your own hair, that you could brush out in ten min- 
utes every morning, would have a more real, healthy 
beauty tlian the elaborate structures which cost you 
hours of time, and give you the headache besides. 
I speak of the short crop, — to put the case at the 
very lowest figure, — for many of you have lovely 
hair of different lengths, and susceptible of a variety 
of arrangements, if you did not suppose yourself 
obliged to build after a foreign pattern, instead of 
following out the intentions of the great Artist who 
made you. 

" Is it necessary absolutely that eveiy woman and 
girl should look exactly like every other one ? There 
are women whom Nature makes with wavy or curly 
hair : let them follow her. There are those whom 
she makes with soft and smooth locks, and with whom 
crinkling and craping is only a sham. They look 
very pretty with it, to be sure ; but, after all, is there 
but one style of beauty.^ and might they not look 
prettier in cultivating the style which Nature seemed 
to have intended for them ? 

" As to the floods of false jcwehy, glass beads, and 
tinsel finery which seem to be sweeping over the toilet 



Sources of Beauty in Dress. 257 

of our women, I must protest that they are vulgariz- 
ing the taste, and having a seriously bad effect on the 
delicacy of artistic perception. It is almost impossi- 
ble to manage such material and give any kind of 
idea of neatness or purity ; for the least wear takes 
away their newness. And of all disreputable things, 
tumbled, rumpled, and tousled finery is the most dis- 
reputable. A simple white muslin, that can come 
fresh from the laundry every week, is, in point of 
real taste, worth any amount of spangled tissues. A 
plain straw bonnet, with only a ribbon across it, is in 
reality in better taste than rubbishy birds or butterflies, 
or tinsel ornaments. 

" Finally, girls, don't dress at haphazard ; for dress, 
so far from being a matter of small consequence, is in 
reality one of the fine arts, — so far from trivial, that 
each country ought to have a style of its own, and 
each individual such a liberty of modification of the 
general fashion as suits and befits her person, her age, 
her position in life, and the kind of character she 
wishes to maintain. 

" The only motive in toilet which seems to have 
obtained much as, yet among young girls is the very 
vague impulse to look ' stylish,' — a desire which must 
answer for more vulgar dressing than one would wish 
to see. If girls would rise above this, and desire to 
express by their dress the attributes of true ladyhood, 

Q 



258 The Chimney-Corner. 

nicety of eye, fastidious neatness, purity of taste, 
truthfulness, and sincerity of nature, they might form, 
each one for herself, a style having its own individual 
beauty, incapable of ever becoming common and 
vulgar. 

" A truly trained taste and eye would enable a lady 
to select from the permitted forms of fashion such as 
might be modified to her purposes, always remember- 
ing that simplicity is safe, that to attempt little, and 
succeed, is better than to attempt a great deal, and 
fail. 

" And now, girls, I will finish by reciting to you the 
lines old Ben Jonson addressed to the pretty girls 
of his time, which form an appropriate ending to my 
remarks. 

' Still to be dressed 
As you were going to a feast ; 
Still to be powdered, still perfumed ; 
Lady, it is to be presumed, 
Though art's hid causes are not found, 
All is not sweet, all is not sound. 

* Give me a look, give me a face, 
That makes simplicity a grace, — 
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free : 
Such sweet neglect more taketh me 
Than all the adulteries of art, 
That strike my eyes, but not my heart.' " 



XL 

THE CATHEDRAL. 

" T AM going to build a cathedral one of these 
J- days," said I to my wife, as I sat looking at the 
slant line of light made by the afternoon sun on our 
picture of the Cathedral of Milan. 

" That picture is one of the most poetic things you 
have among your house ornaments," said Rudolph. 
"-Its original is the world's chief beauty, — a tribute to 
religion such as Art never gave before and never can 
again, — as much before the Pantheon, as the Alps, 
with their virgin snows and glittering pinnacles, are 
above all temples made with hands. Say what you 
v;ill, those Middle Ages that you call Dark had a 
glory of faith that never will be seen in our days of 
cotton-mills and Manchester prints. Where will you 
marshal such an army of saints as stands in yonder 
white-marble forest, visibly transfigured and glorified 
in that celestial Italian air? Saintship belonged to 
the mediaeval Church; the heroism of religion has 
died with it." 



26o The CJiiinuty-Corner. 

"That 's just like one of your assertions, Rudolph," 
said I. " You might as well say that Nature has 
never made any flowers since Linnseus shut up his 
herbarium. We have no statues and pictures of 
modern saints, but saints themselves, thank God, 
have never been wanting. ' As it was in the begin- 
ning, is now, and ever shall be — '" 

" But what about your cathedral ? " said my wife. 

" O yes ! — my cathedral, yes. When my stocks in 
cloud-land rise, I '11 build a cathedral larger than 
Milan's ; and the men, but more particularly the wom- 
en^ thereon, shall be those who have done even more 
than St. Paul tells of in the saints of old, who 'sub- 
dued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, quenched the 
violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of 
weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in figliV 
turned to flight the armies of the aliens.' I am not 
now thinking of Florence Nightingale, nor of the host 
of women who have been walking worthily in her 
footsteps, but of nameless saints of more retired and 
private state, — domestic saints, who have tended 
children not their own through whooping-cough and 
measles, and borne the unruly whims of fretful inva- 
lids, — stocking-darning, shirt-making saints, — saints 
who wore no visible garment of hair-cloth, bound 
themselves with no belts of spikes and nails, yet in 
their inmost souls were marked and scared with the 



The Cathedral. 261 

red cross of a life-long self-sacrifice, — saints for 
whom the mystical terms self-annihilation and self- 
criccijixion had a real and tangible meaning, all the 
stronger because their daily death was marked by no 
outward sign. No mystical rites consecrated them ; 
no organ-music burst forth in solemn rapture to wel- 
come them ; no habit of their order proclaimed to 
themselves and the world that they were the elect of 
Christ, the brides of another life : but small eating 
cares, daily prosaic duties, the petty friction of all 
the littleness and all the inglorious annoyances of 
every day, were as dust that hid the beauty and gran- 
deur of their calling even from themselves ; they 
walked unknown even to their households, unknown 
even to their own souls ; but when the Lord comes to 
build his New Jerusalem, we shall find many a white 
stone with a new name thereon, and the record of 
deeds and words which only He that seeth in secret 
knows. Many a humble soul will be amazed to find 
that the seed it sowed in such weakness, in the dust 
of daily Hfe, has blossomed into immortal flowers 
under the eye of the Lord. 

" When I build my cathedral, that woman," I said, 
pointing to a small painting by the fire, " shall be 
among the first of my saints. You see her there, in 
an every-day dress-cap with a mortal thread-lace 
border, and with a very ordinary worked collar, fast- 



262 TJie Chimney-Corner. 

ened by a visible and terrestrial breastpin. There is 
no nimbus around her head, no sign of the cross 
upon her breast ; her hands are clasped on no cruci- 
fix or rosary. Her clear, keen, hazel eye looks as if 
it could sparkle with mirthful ness, as in fact it 
could ; there are in it both the subtile flasl^ of wit and 
the subdued light of humor ; and though the whole 
face smiles, it has yet a certain decisive firmness that 
speaks the soul immutable in good. That woman 
shall be the first saint in my cathedral, and her name 
shall be recorded as Saint Esther. What makes saint- 
liness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary 
goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and 
greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of 
the heroic. To be really great in little things, to be 
truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of every- 
day life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canoni- 
zation, — and this virtue was hers. New England 
Puritanism must be credited with the making of many 
such women. Severe as was her discipline, and harsh 
as seems now her rule, we have yet to see whether 
women will be born of modern systems of tolerance 
and indulgence equal to those grand ones of the olden 
times w^hose places now know them no more. The 
inconceivable austerity and solemnity with which Pu- 
ritanism invested this mortal life, the awful grandeur 
of the themes which it made household words, the 



The Cathedral. 263 

sublimity of the issues which it hung upon ^the com- 
monest acts of our earthly existence, created charac- 
ters of more than Roman strength and greatness ; and 
the good men and women of Puritan training excelled 
the saints of the Middle Ages, as a soul fully devel- 
oped intellectually, educated to closest thought, and 
exercised in reasoning, is superior to a soul great 
merely through impulse and sentiment. 

" My earliest recollections of Aunt Esther, for so 
our saint was known, were of a bright-faced, cheerful, 
witty, quick-moving little middle-aged person, who 
came into our house like a good fairy whenever there 
was a call of sickness or trouble. If an accident 
happened in the great roistering family of eight or 
ten children, (and when was not something happening 
to some of us ? ) and we were shut up in a sick-room, 
then duly as daylight came the quick step and cheer- 
ful face of Aunt Esther, — not solemn and lugubrious 
like so many sick-room nurses, but with a never-fail- 
ing flow of wit and story that could beguile even the 
most doleful into laughing at their own afflictions. I 
remember how a fit of the quinsy — most tedious of 
all sicknesses to an active child — was gilded and 
glorified into quite a fete by my having Aunt Esther 
all to myself for two whole days, with nothing to do 
but amuse me. She charmed me into smiling at the 
very pangs which had made me weep before, and of 



264 TJic Chimncy-Corner. 

which she described her own experiences in a manner 
to make me think that, after all, the quinsy was some- 
thing with an amusing side to it. Her knowledge of 
all sorts of medicines, gargles, and alleviatives, her 
perfect familiarity with every canon and law of good 
nursing and tending, was something that could only 
have come from long experience in those good old 
New England days when there were no nurses recog- 
nized as a class in the land, but when watching and 
the care of the sick were among those offices of 
Christian life which the families of a neighborhood 
reciprocally rendered each other. Even from early 
youth she had obeyed a special vocation as sister of 
charity in many a sick-room, and, with the usual keen 
intelligence of New England, had widened her powers 
of doing good by the reading of medical and physio- 
logical works. Her legends of nursing in those days 
of long typhus-fever and other formidable and pro- 
tracted forms of disease were to our ears quite won- 
derful, and we regarded her as a sort of patron saint 
of the sick-room. She seemed always so cheerful, so 
bright, and so devoted, that it never occurred to us 
youngsters to doubt that she enjoyed, above all things, 
being with us, waiting on us all day, watching over us 
by night, telling us stories, and answering, in lier 
lively and always amusing and instructive way, that 
incessant fire of questions with which a child perse- 
cutes a grown person. 



The Cathedral. 265 

" Sometimes, as a reward of goodness, we "were 
allowed to visit her in her own room, a neat little 
parlor in the neighborhood, whose windows looked 
down a hillside on one hand, under the boughs of an 
apple orchard, where daisies and clover and bobolinks 
always abounded in summer time, and, on the other, 
faced the street, with a green yard flanked by one or* 
two shady elms between them and the street. No 
nun's cell was ever neater, no bee's cell ever more 
compactly and carefully ar-c.nged ; and to us, familiar 
with the confusion of a ^reat family of little ones, 
there was something always inviting about its stillness, 
its perfect order and the air of thoughtful repose that 
breathed ove' it. She lived there in perfect inde- 
pendence, d' ng, as it was her delight to do, every 
office of life for herself. She wa' ner own cook, her 
own parlor and cham^^r maid ner own laundress j 
and very faultless the ;ookin; washing, ironing, and 
care of her premises were. A slice of Aunt Esther's 
gingerbread, one of Aunt Esthe^r's cookies, had, we all 
believed, certain magical prope ies such as belonged 
to no other mortal mixture. Even a handful of wal- 
nuts that were brought from the depths of her m}»s- 
terious closet had virtues in our eyes such as no other 
walnuts could approach. The little shelf of books 
that hung suspended by cords against her wall was 
sacred in our regard ; the volumes \Tere like no other 
12 



266 The CJiimiicy-Corner. 

books ; and we supposed that she derived from them 
those stores of knowledge on all subjects which she 
unconsciously dispensed among us, — for she was 
always telling us something of metals, or minerals, or 
gems, or plants, or animals, which awakened our curi- 
osity, stimulated our inquiries, and, above all, led us to 
wonder where she had learned it all. Even the slight 
restrictions which her neat habits imposed on our 
breezy and turbulent natures seemed all quite graceful 
and becoming. It was right, in our eyes, to cleanse 
our shoes on scraper and mat with extra diligence, and 
then to place a couple of chips under the heels of our 
boots when we essayed to dry our feet at her spotless 
hearth. We marvelled to see our own faces reflected 
in a thousand smiles and winks from her bright brass 
andirons, — such andirons we thought were seen on 
earth in no other place, — and a pair of radiant brass 
candlesticks, that illustrated the mantel-piece, were 
viewed with no less respect. 

" Aunt Esther's cat was a model for all cats, — so 
sleek, so intelligent, so decorous and well-trained, 
always occupying exactly her own cushion by the fire, 
and never transgressing in one iota the proprieties 
belonging to a cat of good breeding. She shared our 
affections w'ith her mistress, and we were allowed as a 
great favor and privilege, now and then, to hold the 
favorite on our l^ecs, and stroke her satin coat to a 
smoother gloss. 



The Cathedral. _ 267 

" But it was not for cats alone that she had attrac- 
tions. She was in sympathy and fellowship with 
everything that moved and lived ; knew every bird 
and beast with a friendly acquaintanceship. The 
squirrels that inhabited the trees in the front-yard 
were won in time by her blandishments to come and 
perch on her window-sills, and thence, by trains of 
nuts adroitly laid, to disport themselves on the shining 
cherry tea-table that stood between the windows ; and 
we youngsters used to sit entranced with delight as 
they gambolled and waved their feathery tails in frolic- 
some security, eating rations of gingerbread and bits 
of seed-cake with as good a relish as any child among 
us. 

" The habits, the rights, the wrongs, the wants, and 
the sufferings of the animal creation formed the sub- 
ject of many an interesting conversation with her ; 
and we boys, with the natural male instinct of hunting, 
trapping, and pursuing, were often made to pause in 
our career, remembering her pleas for the dumb things 
which could not speak for themselves. 

" Her little hermitage was the favorite resort of 
numerous friends. Many of the young girls wjio 
attended the village academy made her acquaintance, 
and nothing delighted her more than that they should 
come there and read to her the books they were 
studying, when her superior and wide information 



268 The Chimney-Corner, 

enabled her to light up and explain much that was not 
clear to the immature students. 

" In her shady retirement, too, she was a sort of 
Egeria to certain men of genius, who came to read 
to her their writings, to consult her in their arguments, 
and to discuss with her the literature and politics of 
the day, — through all which her mind moved with 
an equal step, yet with a sprightliness and vivacity 
peculiarly feminine. 

" Her memory was remarkably retentive, not only 
of the contents of books, but of all that great outly- 
ing fund of anecdote and story which the quaint and 
earnest New England life always supplied. There 
were pictures of peculiar characters, legends of true 
events stranger than romance, all stored in the cab- 
inets of her mind ; and these came from her lips with 
the greater force because the precision of her memory 
enabled her to authenticate them with name, date, 
and circumstances of vivid reality. From that shad- 
owy line of incidents which marks the twilight boun- 
dary between the spiritual world and the present life 
she drew legends of peculiar clearness, but invested 
with the mysterious charm which always dwells in that 
uncertain region ; and the shrewd flash of her eye, 
and the keen, bright smile with which she answered 
the wondering question, *What do you suppose it 
was ? ' or, ' What could it have been ? ' showed how 



The Cathedral. 269 

evenly rationalism in her mind kept pace with ro- 
mance. 

" The retired room in which she thus read, studied, 
thought, and surveyed from afar the whole world of 
science and literature, and in which she received 
friends and entertained children, was perhaps the 
dearest and freshest spot to her in the world. There 
came a time, however, when the neat little indepen- 
dent establishment v»'as given up, and she went to asso- 
ciate herself with two of her nieces in keeping house 
for a boarding-school of young girls. Here her lively 
manners and her gracious interest in the young made 
her a universal favorite, though the cares she assumed 
broke in upon those habits of solitude and study 
which formed her delight. From- the day that she 
surrendered this independency of hers, she had never, 
for more than a score of years, a home of her own, 
but filled the trying position of an accessory in the 
home of others. Leaving the boarding-school, she 
became the helper of an invalid wife and mother in 
the early nursing and rearing of a family of young 
children, — an office which leaves no privacy and no 
leisure. Her bed was always shared with some little 
one ; her territories were exposed to the constant 
inroads of little pattering feet ; and all the various 
sicknesses and ailments of delicate childhood made 
absorbing drafts upon her time. 



2/0 The Chininey-Corner. 

"After a while she left New England with the 
brother to whose family she devoted herself The 
failing health of the wife and mother left more and 
more the charge of all things in her hands ; servants 
were poor, and all the appliances of living had the 
rawness and inconvenience which in those days at- 
tended Western life. It became her fate to supply 
all other people's defects and deficiencies. Wherever 
a hand failed, there must her hand be. Whenever a 
foot faltered, she must step into the ranks. She was 
the one who thought for and cared for and toiled for 
all, yet made never a claim that any one should care 
for her. 

" It was not till late in my life that I became 
acquainted with the deep interior sacrifice, the con- 
stant self-abnegation, which all her life involved. She 
was born with a strong, vehement, impulsive nature, 
— a nature both proud and sensitive, — a nature 
whose tastes were passions, whose likings and whose 
aversions were of the most intense and positive char- 
acter. Devoted as she always seemed to the mere 
practical and material, she had naturally a deep ro- 
mance and enthusiasm of temperament which ex- 
ceeded all that can be written in novels. It was i 
chiefly owing to this that a home and a central affec- 
tion of her own were never hers. In her early days ' 
of attractiveness, none who would have sought her : 



The Cathedral. 271 

could meet the high requirements of her ideahty j she 
never saw her hero, — and so never married. Family- 
cares, the tending of young children, she often con- 
fessed, were peculiarly irksome to her. She had the 
head of a student, a passionate love for the world 
of books. A Protestant convent, where she might 
devote herself without interruption to study, was her 
ideal of happiness. She had, too, the keenest appre- 
ciation of poetry, of music, of painting, and of natural 
scenery. Her enjoyment in any of these things was 
intensely vivid whenever, by chance, a stray sunbeam 
of the kind darted across the dusty path of her life ; 
yet in all these her life was a constant repression. 
The eagerness with which she would listen to any 
account from those more fortunate ones who had 
known these things, showed how ardent a passion was 
constantly held in check. A short time before her 
death, talking with a friend who had visited Switzer- 
land, she said, with great feeling : ' All my hfe my 
desire to visit the beautifu* places of this earth has 
been so intense, that I cannot but hope that after my 
death I shall be permitted to go and look at them.' 
" The completeness of her self-discipline may be 
gathered from the fact, that no child could ever be 
brought to believe she had not a natural fondness for 
children, or that she found the care of them burden- 
some. It was easy to see that she had naturally all 



2/2 The Chimney-Corner. 

those particular habits, those minute pertinacities in 
respect to her daily movements and the arrangement 
of all her belongings, which would make the med- 
dling, intrusive demands of infancy and childhood 
peculiarly hard for her to meet. Yet never was there 
a pair of toddling feet that did not make free with 
Aunt Esther's room, jiever a curly head that did not 
look up, in confiding assurance of a welcome smile, 
to her bright eyes. Thg inconsiderate and never- 
ceasing requirements of children and invalids never 
drew from her other than a cheerful response ; and 
to my mind there is more saintship in this than in the 
private wearing of any number of hair-cloth shirts or 
belts lined with spikes. 

"In a large family^Df careless, noisy children there 
will be constant losing of thimbles and needles and 
scissors ; but Aunt Esther was always ready, without 
reproach, to help the careless and the luckless. Her 
things, so well kept and so treasured, she was willing 
to lend, with many a cautfon and injunction it is true, 
but also with a relish of right good-will. And, to do 
us justice, we generally felt the sacredness of the 
trust, and were more careful of her things than of our 
own. If a shade of sewing-silk were wanting, or a 
choice button, or a bit of braid or tape. Aunt Esther 
cheerfully volunteered something from her well-kept 
stores, not regarding the trouble she made herself in 



The Cathedral. 273 

seeking the key, unlocking the drawer, and searching 
out in bag or parcel just the treasure demanded. 
Never was more perfect precision, or more perfect 
readiness to accommodate others. 

" Her little income, scarcely reaching a hundred 
dollars yearly, was disposed of with a generosity 
worthy a fortune. One tenth was sacredly devoted 
to charity, and a still further sum laid by every year 
for presents to friends. No Christmas or New Year 
ever came round that Aunt Esther, out of this very 
tiny fund, did not find something for children and 
servants. Her gifts were trifling in value, but well 
timed, — a ball of thread-wax, a paper of pins, a 
pincushion, — something generally so well chosen as 
to show that she had been running over our needs, 
and noting what to give. She was no less gracious 
as receiver than as giver. The little articles that we 
made for her, or the small presents that we could buy 
out of our childish resources, she always declared 
were exactly what she needed ; and she delighted us 
by the care she took of them and the value she set 
upon them. 

" Her income was a source of the greatest pleasure 
to her, as maintaining an independence without which 
she could not have been happy. Though she con- 
stantly gave, to every family in which she lived, ser- 
vices which no money could repay, it would have 
12* R 



2/4 ^-^^^ CJiimncy-Coinier. 

been the greatest trial to her not to be able to provide 
for herself. Her dress, always that of a true gentle- 
woman, — refined, quiet, and neat, — was bought from 
this restricted sum, and her small travelling expenses 
were paid out of it. She abhorred anything folse or 
flashy: her caps were trimmed with rm/ thread-lace, 
and her silk dresses were of the best quality, perfectly 
well made and kept ; and, after all, a little sum al- 
ways remained over in her hands for unforeseen exi- 
gencies. 

" This love of independence was one of the strong- 
est features of her life, and we often playfully told her 
that her only form of selfishness was the monopoly 
of saintship, — that she who gave so much was not 
willing to allow others to give to her, — that she who 
made herself servant of all was not willing to allow 
others to serve her. 

"Among the trials of her life must be reckoned 
much ill-health ; borne, however, with such heroic 
patience that it was not easy to say when the hand 
of pain was laid upon her. She inherited, too, a 
tendency to depression of spirits, which at times 
increased to a morbid and distressing gloom. Few 
knew or suspected these sufferings, so completely 
had she learned to suppress every outward manifes- 
tation that might interfere with the happiness of 
others. In her hours of depression she resolutely 



The Cathedral 



275 



forbore to sadden tlic lives of those around her with 
her own melancholy, and often her darkest moods 
were so lighted up and adorned witli an outside show 
of wit and humor, that those who had known her 
intimately were astonished to hear that she had ever 
been subject to depression. 

* " Her truthfulness of nature amounted almost to 
superstition. From her promise once given she felt 
no change of purpose could absolve her ; and there- 
fore rarely would she give it absolutely, for she could 
7iot alter the thing that had gone forth from her lips. 
Our belief in the certainty of her fulfilling her word 
was like our belief in the immutability of the laws of 
nature. Whoever asked her got of her the absolute 
truth on every subject, and, when she had no good 
thing to say, her silence was often truly awful. When 
anything mean or ungenerous was brought to her 
knowledge, she would close her lips resolutely ; but 
the flash in her eyes showed what she would speak 
were speech permitted. In her last days she spoke 
to a friend of what she had suffered from the strength 
of her personal antipathies. ' I thank God,' she said, 
' that I believe at last I have overcome all that too, 
and that there has not been, for some years, any 
human being toward whom I have felt a movement 
of dislike.' 

" The last year of her life was a constant discipline 



2/6 The CJtinuicy-Corncr. 

of 'unceasing pain, borne with that foititiulo which 
could make her an entertaining and interesting com- 
panion even while the sweat of mortal agony was 
starting from her brow. Her own room she kejU as 
a last asylum, to which she would silently retreat 
when the torture became too intense for tl\e repres- 
sion of society, and there alone, with closed doors, 
she wrestled with her agony. The stubborn indepen- 
dence of her nature took refuge in this ilnal fastness ; 
and she prayed only that she might go down to death 
Nvith the full ability to steady herself all the way, 
needing the help of no other hand. 

" The ultimate struggle of earthly feeling came 
when this proud self-reliance was forced to give way, 
and she was obliged to leave herself helpless in the 
hands of others. 'God requires that I should give 
up my last form of self-will,' she said ; ' now I have 
resigned this, perhaps he will let me go home.' 

" In a good old age, Death, the friend, came and 
opened the door of this mortal state, and a great, soul, 
that had served a long apprenticeship to little things, 
went forth into the joy of its Lord ; a life of self-sacri- 
fice and self-abnegation passed into a life of endless 
rest." 

" But," said Rudolph, " I rebel at this life of self- 
abnegation and selfsacrifice. I do not think it the 
duty of noble women, who have beautiful natures and 



The Cathedral. ' 277 

enlarged and cultivated tastes, to make themselves 
the slaves of the sick-room and nursery." 

" Such was not the teaching of our New England 
faith," said I. " Absolute unselfishness, — the death 
of self, — such were its teachings, and such as Esther's 
the characters it made. ' Do the duty nearest thee,' 
was the only message it gave to ' women with a mis- 
sion ' ; and from duty to duty, from one self-denial to 
another, they rose to a majesty of moral strength 
impossible to any form of mere self-indulgence. It is 
of souls thus sculptured and chiselled by self-denial 
and self-discipline that the living temple of the perfect 
hereafter is to be built. The pain of the discipline is 
short, but the glory of the fruition is eternal." 



XII. 

THE NEW YEAR. 
[1S65.] 

HERE comes tlie First of January, Eighteen 
Hundred and Sixty-Five, and we are all settled 
comfortably into our winter places, with ou^- winter 
surroundings and belongings ; all cracks and openings 
are calked and listed, the double windows are in, the 
furnace dragon in the cellar is ruddy and in good 
liking, sending up his warming respirations through 
every pipe and register in the house ; and yet, though 
an artificial sununer reigns everywhere, like bees, we 
have our swarming-place, — in my library. There is 
my chimney-corner, and my table permanently estab- 
lished on one side of the hearth ; and each of the 
female genus has, so to speak, pitched her own winter- 
tent within sight of the blaze of my camp-fire. I 
discerned to-day that Jennie had surreptitiously ap- 
propriated one of the drawers of my study-table to 
knitting-needles and worsted ; and wicker work-bas- 
kets and stands of various heights and sizes seem to 



The Nczv Year. 279 

be planted here and there for permanence among the 
bookcases. The canary-l)ird has a sunny window, and 
the plants spread out their leaves and unfold their 
blossoms as if there were no ice and snow in the 
street, and Rover makes a hearth-rug of himself in 
winking satisfaction in front of my fire, except wlieu 
Jennie is taken with a fit of discipline, when he beats 
a retreat, and secretes himself under my tal)le. 

Peaceable, ah. how peaceable, home and quiet and 
warmth in winter ! And liow, when we iiear the wind 
whistle, we think of you, O our brave brotliers, our 
saviors and defenders, who for our sake have no 
home but the muddy camp, the hard pillow of the 
barrack, the weary march, the uncertain fare, — you, 
the rank and file, the thousand unnoticed ones, who 
have left warm fires, dear wives, loving little children, 
without even the hope of glory or fame, — without 
even the hope of doing anything remarkable or per- 
ceptible for the Cause you love, — resigned only to fill 
the ditch or bridge the chasm over which your country 
shall walk to peace and joy ! Clood men and true, 
brave unknown hearts, we salute you, and feel that 
we, in our soft peace and security, are not worthy of 
you 1 When we think of you, our simple comforts 
seem luxuries all too good for us, who give so little 
when you give all I 

liut there are others to whom from our bright homes, 



28o TJic CJiinnuy-Conicr. 

our cheerful fnesides, we would fain say a word, if we 
dared. 

Think of a mother receiving a letter with such a 
passage as this in it ! It is extracted from one we 
have just scon, written by a private in the army of 
Sheridan, dcscril)ing the death of a private. " He 
fell instantly, gave a peculiar smile and look, and then 
closed his eyes. We laid him down gently at the foot 
of a large tree. I crossed his hands over his breast, 
closed his eyelids down, but the smile was still on his 
face. I wrapt him in his tent, spread my pocket- 
handkerchief over his face, wrote his name on a piece 
of paper, and pinned it on his breast, and there we 
left him : we could not fnul i)ick or shovel to dig a 
grave." There it is ! — a history that is multiplying 
itself by hundreds daily, the substance of what has 
come to so many homes, and must come to so many 
more before the great price of our ransom is paid ! 

What can we say to you, in those many, many 
homes where the light has gone out forever? — you, O 
fathers, mothers, wives, sisters, haunted by a name 
that has ceased to be spoken on earth, — you, for 
whom there is no more news from the camp, no more 
reading of lists, no more tracing of maps, no more 
letters, but only a blank, dead silence ! The battle- 
cry goes on, but for you it is passed by ! the victory 
comes, but, oh, never more to bring him back to you ! 



The Neiv Year, 281 

your offering to this great cause has been made, and 
been taken ; you have thrown into it all your living, 
even all that you had, and from henceforth your house 
is left unto you desolate ! O ye watchers of the cross, 
ye waiters by the sepulchre, what can be said to you? 
Wc could almost extinguish our own homc-fircs, that 
seem too bright when we think of your darkness ; the 
laugh dies on our lip, the lamp burns dim through our 
tears, and we seem scarcely worthy to speak words 
of comfort, lest we seem as those who mock a grief 
they cannot know. 

But is there no consolation ? Is it nothing to have 
had such a treasure to give, and to have given it freely 
for the noblest cause for which ever battle was set, — 
for the salvation of your country, for the freedom of 
ali mankind? Had he died a fruitless death, in the 
track of common life, blasted by fever, smitten or rent 
by crushing accident, then might his most precious life 
seem to be as water spilled upon the ground ; Init now 
it has been given for a cause and a purpose wortliy 
even the anguish of your loss and sacrifice. He has 
been counted worthy to be numbered with those who 
stood with precious incense between the living and 
the dead, that the plague which was consuming us 
might be stayed. The blood of these young martyrs 
shall be the seed of the future church of liberty, and 
from every drop shall spring up flowers of healing. O 



282 77/6' CJi'u}uicy-Corncr. 

widow ! O mother ! blessed amoni; bereaved women I 
there remains to you a treasure that belongs not to 
those who have lost in any other wise, — the power to 
say, " He died for his country." In all the good that 
comes of this anguish you shall have a right and share 
hy virtue of this sacrifice. 'I'he joy of freedmen burst- 
ing from chains, the glory of a nation new-born, the 
assurance of a trium])hant future for your country and 
the world, — all these become yours by the purchase- 
money of that precious blood. 

Besides this, there are other treasures that come 
through sorrow, and sorrow alone. There are celes- 
tial plants of root so long and so deep that the land 
must be torn and furrowed, ploughed up from the 
very foundation, before they can strike and flourish ; 
and when we see how (lod's plough is driving back- 
ward and forward and across this nation, rending, 
tearing up tender shoots, and burying soft wild-flowers, 
we ask ourselves, What is He going to plant? 

Not the fnst year, nor the second, after the ground 
has been broken up, does the purpose of the husband- 
man appear. At first we see only what is uprooted 
and ploughed in, — the daisy drabbled, and the violet 
crushed, — and the first trees planted amid the un- 
sightly furrows stand dumb and disconsolate, irreso- 
lute in leaf, and without flower or fruit. Their work 
is under the ground. In darkness and silence they 



The New Year. 283 

are putting fortli long fibres, searching hither and 
thither under the black soil for the strength that years 
hence shall burst into bloom and bearing. 

What is true of nations is true of individuals. It 
may seem now winter and desolation with you. Your 
hearts have been ploughed and harrowed and are now 
frozen up. There is not a flower left, not a bhuic of 
grass, not a bird to sing, — and it is hard to believe 
that any brighter flowers, any greener herbage, shall 
spring up than those which have been torn away ; and 
yet there will. Nature herself teaches you to-day. 
Out-doors nothing but bare branches and shrouding 
snow ; and yet you know that there is not a tree that 
is not patiently holding out at the end of its boughs 
next year's buds, frozen indeed, but unkilled. The 
rhododendron and the lilac have their blossoms all 
ready, wrapped in cere-cloth, waiting in patient faith. 
Under the frozen ground the crocus and the hyacinth 
and the tulip hide in their hearts the perfect forms of 
future flowers. And it is even so with you : your leaf- 
buds of the future are frozen, but not killed ; the soil 
of your heart has many flowers under it cold and still 
now, but they will yet come up and bloom. 

The dear old book of comfort tells of no present 
healing for sorrow. No chastening for the present 
seemeth joyous, but grievous, but afterwards it yield- 
eth peaceable fruits of righteousness. We, as indi- 



2S4 TJic CJiiinncy-Corncr. 

viduals, as a nation, need to have faith in that after- 
wards. It is sure to come, — sure as spring and 
summer to follow winter. 

There is a certain amount of suffering which must 
follow the rending of the great cords of life, suffering 
which is natural and inevitable ; it cannot bd^ argued 
down ; it cannot be stilled ; it can no more be soothed 
by any effort of faith and reason than the pain of a 
fractured limb, or the agony of fire on the living flesh. 
All that we can do is to brace ourselves to bear it, 
calling on God, as the martyrs did in the fire, and 
resigning ourselves to let it burn on. We must be 
willing to suffer since God so wills. There are just 
so many waves to go over us, just so many arrows of 
stinging thought to be shot into our soul, just so many 
faintings and sinkings and revivjngs only to suffer 
again, belonging to and inherent in our portion of 
sorrow ; and there is a work of healing that God has 
placed in the hands of Time alone. 

Time heals all things at last ; yet it depends much 
on us in our suffering, whether time shall send us 
forth healed, indeed, but maimed and crippled and 
callous, or whether, looking to the great Physician 
of sorrows, and coworking with him, we come forth 
stronger and fairer even for our wounds. 

We call ourselves a Christian people, and the pecu- 
liarity of Christianity is that it is a worship and doc- 



The New Year. 2S5 

trine of sorrow. The five wounds of Jesus, the instru- 
ments of the passion, the cross, the sepulchre, — 
these are its emblems and watchwords. In thousands 
of churches, amid gold and gems and altars fragrant 
with perfume, are seen the crown of thorns, the nails, 
the spear, the cup of vinegar mingled with gall, the 
sponge that could not slake that burning death-thirst \ 
and in a voice choked with anguish the Church in 
many lands and divers tongues prays from age to age, 
'* By thine agony and bloody sweat, by thy cross and 
passion, by thy precious death and burial ! " — mighty 
words of comfort, whose meaning reveals itself only 
to souls fainting in the cold death-sweat of mortal 
anguish ! They tell all Christians that by uttermost 
distress alone was the Captain of their salvation made 
perfect as a Saviour. 

Sorrow brings us into the true unity of the Church, 
— that unity which underlies all external creeds, and 
unites all hearts that have suffered deeply enough to 
know that when sorrow is at its utmost there is but 
one kind of sorrow, and but one remedy. What mat- 
ter, in extremis, whether we be called Romanist, or 
Protestant, or Greek, or Calvinist t 

We suffer, and Christ suffered ; we die, and Christ 
died ; he conquered suffering and death, he rose and 
lives and reigns, — and we shall conquer, rise, live, 
and reign. The hours on the cross were long, the 



286 The Chimney -Corner. 

thirst was bitter, the darkness and horror real, — hut 
they ended. After the wail, " My God, why hast thou 
forsaken me ? " came the calm, " It is finished " ; 
pledge to us all that our " It is finished " shall come 
also. 

Christ arose, fresh, joyous, no more to die ; and it 
is written, that, when the disciples were gathered 
together in fear and sorrow, he stood in the midst 
of them, and showed unto them his hands and his 
side ; and then were they glad. Already had the 
healed wounds of Jesus become pledges of consola- 
tion to innumerable thousands ; and those who, like 
Christ, have suffered the weary struggles, the dim 
horrors of the cross, — who have lain, like him, cold 
and chilled in the hopeless sepulchre, — if his spirit 
wakes them to life, shall come forth with healing 
power for others who have suffered and are suffering. 

Count the good and beautiful ministrations that 
have been wrought in this world of need and labor, 
and how many of them have been wrought by hands 
wounded and scarred, by hearts that had scarcely 
ceased to bleed ! 

How many priests of consolation is God now or- 
daining by the fiery imposition of sorrow ! how many 
Sisters of the Bleeding Heart, Daughters of Mercy, 
Sisters of Charity, are receiving their first vocation in 
tears and blood ! 



The New Year. 287 

The report of every battle strikes into some home ; 
and heads fall low, and hearts are shattered, and only 
God sees the joy that is set before them, and that 
shall come out of their sorrow. He sees our morning 
at the same moment that He sees our night, — sees 
us comforted, healed, risen to a higher life, at the 
same moment that He sees us crushed and broken in 
the dust ; and so, though tenderer than we. He bears 
our great sorrows for the joy that is set before us. 

After the Napoleonic wars had desolated Europe, 
the country was, like all countries after war, full of 
shattered households, of widows and orphans and 
homeless wanderers. A nobleman of Silesia, the 
Baron von Kottwitz, who had lost his wife and all his 
family in the reverses and sorrows of the times, found 
himself alone in the world, which looked more dreary 
and miserable through the multiplying lenses of his 
own tears. But he was one of those whose heart had 
been quickened in its death anguish by the resurrec- 
tion voice of Christ ; and he came forth to life and 
comfort. He bravely resolved to do all that one man 
CDuld to lessen the great sum of misery. He sold his 
estates in Silesia, bought in Berlin a large building 
that had been used as barracks for the soldiers, and, 
fitting it up in plain, commodious apartments, formed 
there a great familj^-establishment, into which he re- 
ceived the wrecks and fragments of families that had 



288 The Chimney-Corner. 

been broken up by the war, — orphan children, wid- 
owed and helpless women, decrepit old people, dis- 
abled soldiers. These he made his family, and con- 
stituted himself their father and chief; He abode 
with them, and cared for them as a parent He had 
schools for the children ; the more advanced he put 
to trades and employments ; he set up a hospital foi 
the sick ; and for all he had the priestly ministrations 
of his own Christ-like heart. The celebrated Profes- 
sor Tholuck, one of the most learned men of modern 
Germany, was an ezxly protege of the old Baron's, who, 
discerning his talents, put him in the way of a liberal 
education. In his earlier years, like many others of 
the young who play with life, ignorant of its needs, 
Tholuck piqued himself on a lordly scepticism with 
regard to the commonly received Christianity, and 
even wrote an essay to prove the superiority of the 
Mohammedan to the Christian religion. In speaking 
of his conversion, he says, — " What moved me was 
no argument, nor any spoken reproof, but simply that 
divine image of the old Baron walking before my soul. 
That life was an argument always present to me, and 
which I never could answer; and so I became a 
Christian." In the life of this man we see the victory 
over sorrow. How many with means like his, when 
•desolated by like bereavements, have lain coldly and 
idly gazing on the miseries of life, and weaving around 



The New Year. 289 

themselves icy tissues of doubt and despair, — doubt- 
ing the being of a God, doubting the reality of a Prov- 
idence, doubting the divine love, imbittered and rebel- 
lious against the power which they could not resist, 
yet to which they would not submit ! In such a chill 
heart-freeze lies the danger of sorrow. And it is a 
mortal danger. It is a torpor that must be resisted, 
as the man in the whirling snows must bestir himself, 
or he will perish. The apathy of melancholy must be 
broken by an effort of religion and duty. The stag- 
nant blood must be made to flow by active work, and 
the cold hand warmed by clasping the hands out- 
stretched towards it in sympathy or supplication. 
One orphan child taken in, to be fed, clothed, and 
nurtured, may save a heart from freezing to death : 
and God knows this war is making but too many 
orphans ! 

It is easy to subscribe to an orphan asylum, and go 
on in one's despair and loneliness. Such ministries 
may do good to the children who are thereby saved 
from the street, but they impart little warmth and 
comfort to the giver. One destitute child housed, 
taught, cared for, and tended personally, will bring 
more solace to a suffering heart than a dozen main 
tained in an asylum. Not that the child will prob 
ably prove an angel, or even an uncommonly inter- 
esting mortal. It is a prosaic work, this bringing-up 
13 s 



290 ' TJie Cliimncy-Corner. 

of children, and there can be little rosewater in it. 
The child may not appreciate what is done for him, 
may not be particularly grateful, may have disagree- 
able faults, and continue to have them after much 
pains on your part to eradicate them, — and yet it is 
a fact, that to redeem one human being from destitu- 
tion and ruin, even in some homely every-day course 
of ministrations, is one of the best possible tonics 
and alteratives to a sick and wounded spirit. 

But this is not the only avenue to beneficence which 
the war opens. We need but name the service of 
hospitals, the care and education of the freedmen, — 
for these are charities that have long been before the 
eyes of the community, and have employed thousands 
of busy hands : thousands of sick and dying beds to 
tend, a race to be educated, civilized, and Christian- 
ized, surely were work enough for one age ; and yet 
this is not all. War shatters everything, and it is hard 
to say what in society will not need rebuilding and 
binding up and strengthening anew. Not the least 
of the evils of war are the vices which a great army 
engenders wherever it moves, — vices peculiar to mili- 
tary life, as others are peculiar to peace. The poor 
soldier perils for us not merely his body, but his soul. 
He leads a life of harassing and exhausting toil and 
privation, of violent strain on the nervous energies, 
alternating with sudden collapse, creating a craving 



The Nezv Year. 291 

for stimulants, and endangering the formation of fatal 
habits. What furies and harpies are those that follow 
the army, and that seek out the soldier in his tent, far 
from home, mother, wife, and sister, tired, disheart- 
ened, and tempt him to forget his troubles in a mo- 
mentary exhilaration, that burns only to chill and to 
destroy ! Evil angels are always active and indefati- 
gable, and there must be -good angels enlisted to face 
them ; and here is employment for the slack hand of 
grief Ah, we have known mothers bereft of sons in 
this war, who have seemed at once to open wide their 
hearts, and to become mothers to every brave soldier 
in the field. They have lived only to work, — and in 
place of one lost, their sons have been counted by 
thousands. 

And not least of all the fields for exertion and 
Christian charity opened by this war is that presented 
by womanhood. The war is abstracting from the 
community its protecting and sheltering elements, and 
leaving the helpless and dependent in vast dispropor- 
tion. For years to come, the average of lone women 
will be largely increased ; and the demand, always 
great, for some means by which they may provide for 
themselves, in the rude jostle of the world, will be- 
come more urgent and imperative. 

Will any one sit pining away in inert grief, when 
two streets off are the midnight dance-houses, where 



292 The Chimney-Corner. 

girls of twelve, thirteen, and fourteen are being lured 
into the way of swift destruction ? How many of 
these are daughters of soldiers who have given their 
hearts' blood for us and our liberties ! 

Two noble women of the Society of Friends have 
lately been taking the gauge of suffering and misery 
in our land, visiting the hospitals at every accessible 
point, pausing in our great cities, and going in their 
purity to those midnight orgies where mere children 
are being trained for a life of vice and infamy. They 
have talked with these poor bewildered souls, en- 
tangled in toils as terrible and inexorable as those of 
the slave-market, and many of whom are frightened 
and distressed at the life they are beginning to lead, 
and earnestly looking for the means of escape. In 
the judgment of these holy women, at least one third 
of those with whom they have talked are children so 
recently entrapped, and so capable of reformation, 
that there would be the greatest hope in efforts for 
their salvation. While such things are to be done in 
our land, is there any reason why any one should die 
of grief.? One soul redeemed will do more to lift the 
burden of sorrow than all the blandishments and di- 
versions of art, all the alleviations of luxury, all the 
sympathy of friends. 

In the Roman Catholic Church there' is an order 
of women called the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, 



The New Year. 293 

who have renounced the world to devote themselves, 
their talents and property, entirely to the work of 
seeking out and saving the fallen of their own sex ; 
and the wonders worked by their self-denying love on 
the hearts and lives of even the most depraved are 
credible only to those who know that the Good Shep- 
herd Himself ever lives and works with such spirits 
engaged in such a work. A similar order of women 
exists in New York, under the direction of the Epis- 
copal Church, in connection with St. Luke's Hospital; 
and another in England, who tend the " House of 
Mercy " of Clewer. 

Such benevolent associations offer objects of inter- 
est to that class which most needs something to fill 
the void made by bereavement. The wounds of grief 
are less apt ^ find a cure in that rank of life where 
the sufferer has wealth and leisure. The/<7^r widow, 
whose husband was her all, must break the paralysis of 
grief The hard necessities of life are her physicians ; 
they send her out to unwelcome, yet friendly toil, 
which, hard as it seems, has yet its healing power. 
But the sufferer surrounded by the appliances of 
wealth and luxury may long indulge the baleful apathy, 
and remain in the damp shadows of the valley of 
death till strength and health are irrecoverably lost. 
How Christ-like is the thought of a woman, graceful, 
elegant, cultivated, refined, whose voice has been 



294 I^J^^ Chimney-Corner. 

trained to melody, whose fingers can make sweet har- 
mony ^vith every touch, whose pencil and whose nee- 
dle can awake the beautiful creations of art, devoting 
all these powers to the work of charming back to the 
sheepfold those wandering and bewildered lambs 
whom the Good Shepherd still calls his own ! Jenny 
Lind, once, when she sang at a concert for destitute 
children, exclaimed in her enthusiasm, " Is it not 
beautiful that I can sing so ? " And so may not every 
woman feel, when her graces and accomplishments 
draw the wanderer, and charm away evil demons, and 
soothe the sore and sickened spirit, and make the 
Christian fold more attractive than the dizzy gardens 
of false pleasure ? 

In such associations, and others of kindred nature, 
how many of the stricken and bereaved women of our 
country might find at once a home and an object in 
life ! Motherless hearts might be made glad in a 
better and higher motherhood ; and the stock of 
earthly life that seemed cut off at the root, and dead 
past recovery, may be grafted upon with a shoot from 
the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God. 

So the beginning of this eventful 1865, which finds 
us still treading the wine-press of our great conflict, 
should bring with it a serene and solemn hope, a joy 
such as those had with whom in the midst of the fiery 
furnace there walked one like unto the Son of God. 



TJie New Year. 295 

The great affliction that has come upon our country- 
is so evidently the purifying chastening of a Father, 
rather than the avenging anger of a Destroyer, that all 
hearts may submit themselves in a solemn and holy 
calm still to bear the burning that shall make us clean 
from dross and bring us forth to a higher national life. 
Never, in the whole course of our history, have such 
teachings of the pure abstract Right been so com- 
mended and forced upon us by Providence. Never 
have public men been so constrained to humble them- 
selves before God, and to acknowledge that there is a 
Judge that ruleth in the earth. Verily his inquisition 
for blood has been strict and awful ; and for every 
stricken household of the poor and lowly hundreds 
of households of the oppressor have been scattered. 
The land where the family of the slave was first 
annihilated, and the negro, with all the loves and 
hopes of a man, was proclaimed to be a beast to be 
bred and sold in market with the horse and the swine, 
— that land, with its fair name, Virginia, has been 
made a desolation so signal, so wonderful, that the 
blindest passer-by cannot but ask for what sin so aw- 
ful a doom has been meted out. The prophetic vis- 
ions of Nat Turner, who saw the leaves prop blood 
and the land darkened, have been fulfilled. The 
work of justice which he predicted is being executed 
to the uttermost. 



296 The Chimney-Corner. 

But when this strange work of judgment and justice 
is consummated, when our country, through a thou- 
sand battles and ten thousands of precious deaths, 
shall have come forth from this long agony, redeemed 
and regenerated, then God himself shall return and 
dwell with us, and the Lord God shall wip^ away all 
tears from all faces, and the rebuke of his people 
shall he utterly take away. 



XIII. 

THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS. 

WHEN the first number of the Chimney-Corner 
appeared, the snow lajr white on the ground, 
the buds on the trees were closed and frozen, and be- 
neath the hard frost-bound soil lay buried the last 
year's flower-roots, waiting for a resurrection. 

So in our hearts it was winter, — a winter of patient 
suffering and expectancy, — a winter of suppressed 
sobs, of inward bleedings, — a cold, choked, com- 
pressed anguish of endurance, for how long and how 
much God only could tell us. 

The first paper of the Chimney-Corner, as was most 
meet and fitting, was given to those homes made 
sacred and venerable by the cross of martyrdom, — 
by the chrism of a great sorrow. That Chimney-Cor- 
ner made bright by home firelight seemed a fitting 
place for a solemn act of reverent sympathy for the 
homes by whose darkness our homes had been pre- 
served bright, by whose emptiness our homes had 



298 TJie Chiinjiey-Corner. 

been kept full, by whose losses our homes had been 
enriched ; and so we ventured with trembling to utter 
these words of sympathy and cheer to those whom 
God had chosen to this great sacrifice of sorrow. 

The winter months passed with silent footsteps, 
spring returned, and the sun, with ever-waxing power, 
unsealed the snowy sepulchre of buds and leaves, — 
birds reappeared, brooks were unchained, flowers 
filled every desolate dell with blossoms and perfume. 
And with returning spring, in like manner, the chill 
frost of our fears and of our dangers melted before the 
breath of the Lord. The great war, which lay like a 
mountain of ice upon our hearts, suddenly dissolved 
and was gone. The fears of the past were as a 
dream when one awaketh, and now we scarce realize 
our deliverance. A thousand hopes are springing up 
everywhere, like spring-flowers in the forest. All is 
hopefulness, all is bewildering joy. 

But this our joy has been ordained to be changed 
into a wail of sorrow. The kind hard hand, that held 
the helm so steadily in the desperate tossings of the 
storm, has been stricken down just as we entered 
port, — the fatherly heart that bore all our sorrows 
can take no earthly part in our joys. His were the 
cares, the watchings, the toils, the agonies, of a nation 
in mortal struggle ; and God, looking down, was so 
well pleased with his humble faithfulness, his patient 



The Noble Army of Martyrs. 299 

continuance in well-doing, that earthly rewards and 
honors seemed all too poor for him, so he reached 
down and took him to immortal glories. " Well done, 
good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of 
thy Lord!" 

Henceforth the place of Abraham Lincoln is first 
among that noble army of martyrs who have given 
their blood to the cause of human freedom. The eyes 
are yet too dim with tears that would seek calmly to 
trace out his place in history. He has been a marvel 
and a phenomenon among statesmen, a new kind of 
ruler in the earth. There has been something even 
unearthly about his extreme unselfishness, his utter 
want of personal ambition, personal self-valuation, 
personal feeling. 

The most unsparing criticism, denunciation, and 
ridicule never moved him to a single bitter expres- 
sion, never seemed to awaken in him a single bitter 
thought. The. most exultant hour of party victory 
brought no exultation to him ; he accepted power not 
as an honor, but as a responsibility ; and when, after 
a severe struggle, that power came a second time into 
his hands, there was something preternatural in the 
calmness of his acceptance of it. The first impulse 
seemed to be a disclaimer of all triumph over the 
party that had strained their utmost to push him from 
his seat, and then a sober girding up of his loins to go 



300 The Chimncy-Coriier. 

on with the work to which he was appointed. His 
last inaugural was characterized by a tone so peculiar- 
ly solemn and free from earthly passion, that it seems 
to us now, who look back on it in the light of what 
has followed, as if his soul had already parted from 
earthly things, and felt the powers of the world to 
come. It was not the formal state-paper of the chief 
of a party in an hour of victory, so much as the sol- 
emn soliloquy of a great soul reviewing its course 
under a vast responsibility, and appealing from all 
earthly judgments to the tribunal of Infinite Justice. 
It was the solemn clearing of his soul for the great 
sacrament of Death, and the words that he quoted in 
it with such thrilling power were those of the adoring 
spirits that veil their faces before the throne : "Just 
and true are thy ways, thou King of saints ! " 

Among the rich treasures which this bitter struggle 
has brought to our country, not the least is the moral 
wealth which has come to us in the memory of our 
martyrs. Thousands of men, women, and children 
too, in this great conflict, have " endured tortures, 
not accepting deliverance," counting not their lives 
dear unto them in the holy cause ; and they have 
done this as understandingly and thoughtfully as the 
first Christians who sealed their witness with their 
blood. 

Let us in our hour of deliverance and victory re- 



The Noble Army of Martyrs. 301 

cord the solemn vow, that our right hand shall forget 
her cunning before we forget them and their suffer- 
ings, — that our tongue shall cleave to the roof of our 
mouth if we remember them not above our chief joy. 

Least suffering among that noble band were those 
who laid down their lives on the battle-field, to whom 
was given a brief and speedy passage to the victor's 
meed. The mourners who mourn for such as these 
must give place to another and more august band, 
who have sounded lower deeps of anguish, and 
drained bitterer drops out of our great cup of trem- 
bling. 

The narrative of the lingering tortures, indignities, 
and sufferings of our soldiers in Rebel prisons has 
been something so harrowing that we have not dared 
to dwell upon it. We have been helplessly dumb 
before it, and have turned away our eyes from what 
we could not relieve, and therefore could not endure 
to look upon. But now, when the nation is called to 
strike the great and solemn balance of justice, and to 
decide measures of final retribution, it behooves us all 
that we should at least watch with our brethren for 
one hour, and take into our account what they have 
been made to suffer for us. 

Sterne said he could realize the miseries of captiv- 
ity only by setting before him the image of a misera- 
ble captive with hollow cheek and wasted eye, notch- 



302 TJic CJiivnicy-Conicr. 

ing upon a stick, day after day, the weary record of 
the flight of time. So we can form a more vivid 
jMctiire of the sufferings of our martyrs from one 
simple story than from any general description ; and 
therefore we will speak right on, and tell one story 
which might stand as a specimen of what has been 
done and suffered by thousands. 

In the town of Andover, Massachusetts, a boy of 
sixteen, named Walter Raymond, enlisted among our 
volunteers. He was under the prescribed age, but 
his eager zeal led him to follow the footsteps of an 
elder brother who had already enlisted ; and the fa- 
ther of the boy, though these two were all the sons 
he had, instead of availing himself of his legal right to 
withdraw him, indorsed the act in the following letter 
addressed to his Captain : — 

"Andover, Mass., August 15, 1S62. 
" Captain Hunt, — My eldest son has enlisted in 
your company. I send you his younger brother. 
He is, and always has been, in perfect health, of 
more than the ordinary power of endurance, honest, 
truthful, and courageous. I doubt not you will find 
him on trial all you can ask, except his age, and that 
I am sorry to say is only sixteen ; yet if our country 
needs his service, take him. 

" Your obedient servant, 

" Samuel Raymond." 



The Noble Army of Martyrs. 303 

The boy went forth to real service, and to succes- 
sive battles at Kingston, at Whitehall, and at Golds- 
borough ; and in all did his duty bravely and faith- 
fully. He met the temptations and dangers of a sol- 
dier's life with the pure-hearted firmness of a Chris- 
tian child, neither afraid nor ashamed to remember 
his baptismal vows, his Sunday-school teachings, and 
his mother's wishes. 

He had passed his promise to his mother against 
drinking and smoking, and held it with a simple, 
childlike steadiness. When in the midst of malarious 
swamps, physicians and officers advised the use of 
tobacco. The boy writes to his mother : " A great 
many have begun to smoke, but I shall not do it 
without your permission, though I think it does a 
great deal of good." 

In his leisure hours, he was found in his tent read- 
ing ; and before battle he prepared his soul with the 
beautiful psalms and collects for the day, as appoint- 
ed by his church, and writes with simplicity to his 
friends, — 

" I prayed God that he would watch over me, and 
if I fell, receive my soul in heaven ; and I also prayed 
tliat I might not forget the cause I was fighting for, 
and turn my bagk in fear." 

After nine months' service, he returned with 
a soldier's experience, though with a frame weak- 



304 The Chimncy-Coruer. 

ened by sickness in a malarious region. But no 
sooner did health and strength return than he again 
enlisted, in the Massachusetts cavalry service, and 
passed many months of constant activity and adven- 
ture, being in some severe skirmishes and battles 
with that portion of Sheridan's troops who approached 
nearest to Richmond, getting within a mile and a half 
of the city. At the close of this raid, so hard had 
been the service, that only thirty horses were left out 
of seventy-four in his company, and Walter and two 
others were the sole survivors among eight who 
occupied the same tent. 

On the 1 6th of August, Walter was taken prisoner 
in a skirmish ; and from the time that this news 
reached his parents, until the i8th of the following 
March, they could ascertain nothing of his fate. A 
general exchange of prisoners having been then ef- 
fected, they learned that he had died on Christmas 
Day in Salisbury Prison, of hardship and privation. 

What these hardships were is, alas ! easy to be 
known from those too well-authenticated accounts 
published by our government of the treatment ex- 
perienced by our soldiers in the Rebel prisons. 

Robbed of clothing, of money, of the soldier's best 
friend, his sheltering blanket, — herded in shivering 
nakedness on the bare ground, — deprived of every 
implement by which men of energy and spirit had 



The Noble Army of Martyrs. 305 

soon bettered their lot, — forbidden to cut in adjacent 
forests branches for shelter, or fuel to cook their 
coarse food, — fed on a pint of corn-and-cob-meal 
per day, with some slight addition of molasses or 
rancid meat, — denied all mental resources, all letters 
from home, all writing to friends, — these men were 
cut off from the land of the living while yet they lived, 
— they were made to dwell in darkness as those that 
have been long dead. 

By such slow, lingering tortures, — such weary, 
wasting anguish and sickness of body and soul, — it 
was the infernal policy of the Rebel government either 
to wring from them an abjuration of their country, 
or by slow and steady draining away of the vital 
forces to render them forever unfit to serve in her 
armies. 

Walter's constitution bore four months of this usage, 
when death came to his release. A fellow-sufterer, 
who was with him in his last hours, brought the ac- 
count to his parents. 

Through all his terrible privations, even the linger- 
ing pains of slow starvation, Walter preserved his 
steady simplicity, his faith in God, and unswerving 
fidelity to the cause for which he was suffering. 

When the Rebels had kept the prisoners fasting for 
days, and then brought in delicacies to tempt their 
appetite, hoping thereby to induce them to desert 



3o6 TJie Chimney-Corner. 

their flag, he only answered, "I would rather be 
carried out in that dead-cart ! " 

When told by some that he must steal from his 
fellow-sufferers, as many did, in order to relieve the 
pangs of hunger, he answered, " No, I was not 
brought up to that ! " And so when his weakened 
system would no longer receive the cob-meal which 
was his principal allowance, he set his face calmly 
towards death. 

He grew gradually weaker and weaker and fainter 
and fainter, and at last disease of the lungs set in, 
and it became apparent that the end was at hand. 

On Christmas Day, while thousands among us were 
bowing in our garlanded churches or surrounding fes- 
tive tables, this young martyr lay on the cold, damp 
ground, watched over by his destitute friends, who 
sought to soothe his last hours with such scanty com- 
forts as their utter poverty afforded, — raising his head 
on the block of wood which was his only pillow, and 
moistening his brow and lips with water, while his 
life ebbed slowly away, until about two o'clock, when 
he suddenly roused himself, stretched out his hand, 
and, drawing to him his dearest friend among those 
around him, said, in a strong, clear voice : — 

" I am going to die. Go tell my father I am ready 
to die, for I die for God and my country," — and, 
looking up with a triumphant smile, he passed to the 
reward of the faithful. 



The Noble Army of Martyrs. 2>^y 

And now, men and brethren, if this story were a sin- 
gle one, it were worthy to be had in remembrance ; 
but Walter Raymond is not the only noble-hearted boy 
or man that has been slowly tortured and starved and 
done to death, by the fiendish policy of Jefferson 
Davis and Robert Edmund Lee. 

No, — wherever this simple history shall be read, 
there will arise hundreds of men and women who will 
testify, " Just so died my son ! " " So died my 
brother ! " " So died my husband ! " "So died my 
father ! " 

The numbers who have died in these lingering tor- 
tures are to be counted, not by hundreds, or even by 
thousands, but by tens of thousands. 

And is there to be no retribution for a cruelty so 
vast, so aggravated, so cowardly and base ? And if 
there is retribution, on whose head should it fall ? 
Shall we seize and hang the poor, ignorant, stupid, 
imbruted semi-barbarians who were set as jailers to 
keep these hells of torment and inflict these insults 
and cruelties ? or shall we punish the educated, intel- 
ligent chiefs who were the head and brain of the 
iniquity.'' 

If General Lee had been determined not to have 
prisoners starved or abused, does any one doubt that 
he could have prevented these things ? Nobody 
doubts it. His raiment is red with the blood of his 



3o8 TJic CJiimncy-Coriier. 

helpless captives. Docs any one doubt that Jefferson 
Davis, living in ease and luxury in Richmond, knew 
that men were dying by inches in filth and squalor 
and privation in the Libby Prison, within bowshot of 
his own door ? Nobody doubts it. It was his will, 
his deliberate policy, thus to destroy those who fell 
into his hands. The chief of a so-called Confederacy, 
who could calmly consider among his official docu- 
ments incendiary plots for the secret destruction of 
ships, hotels, and cities full of peaceable people, is a 
chief well worthy to preside over such cruelties ; but 
his only just title is President of Assassins, and the 
whole civilized world should make common cause 
against such a miscreant. 

There has been, on both sides of the water, much 
weak, ill-advised talk of mercy and magnanimity to be 
extended to these men, whose crimes have produced 
a misery so vast and incalculable. The wretches 
who have tortured the weak and the helpless, who 
have secretly plotted to supplement, by dastardly 
schemes of murder and arson, that strength which 
failed them in fair fight, have been commiserated as 
brave generals and unfortunate patriots, and efforts 
are made to place them within the comities of war. 

It is no feeling of personal vengeance, but a sense 
of the eternal fitness of things, that makes us rejoice, 
when criminals, who have so outraged every sentiment 



The Noble Army of Maj'tyrs. 309 

of humanity, are arrested and arraigned and awarded 
due retribution at the bar of their country's justice. 
There are crimes against God and human nature which 
it is treason alike to God and man not to punish ; 
and such have been the crimes of the traitors who 
were banded together in Richmond. 

If there be those whose hearts lean to pity, we can 
show them where all the pity of their hearts may be 
better bestowed than in deploring the woes of assas- 
sins. Let them think of the thousands of fathers, 
mothers, wives, sisters, whose lives will be forever 
haunted with memories of the slow tortures in which 
their best and bravest were done to death. 

The sufferings of those brave men are ended. 
Nearly a hundred thousand are sleeping in those sad, 
nameless graves, — and may their rest be sweet ! 
" There the wicked cease from troubling, there the 
weary are at rest There the prisoners rest together ; 
they hear not the voice of the oppressor." But, O ye 
who have pity to spare, spare it for the broken-hearted 
friends, who, to life's end, will suffer over and over 
all that their dear ones endured. Pity the mothers 
who hear their sons' faint calls in dreams, who in 
many a weary night-watch see th^ pining and wast- 
ing, and yearn with a life-long, unappeasable yearning 
to have been able to soothe those forsaken, lonely 
death-beds. Oh, man or woman, if you have pity to 



310 The Chimney-Corner. 

spare, spend it not on Lee or Davis, — spend it on 
their victims, on the thousands of living hearts which 
these men of sin have doomed to an anguish that will 
end only with life ! 

Blessed are the mothers whose sons passed in bat- 
tle, — a quick, a painless, a glorious death ! Blessed 
in comparison, — yet we weep for them. We rise up 
and give place at sight of their mourning-garments. 
We reverence the sanctity of their sorrow. But before 
this other sorrow we are dumb in awful silence. We 
find no words with which to console such grief. We 
feel that our peace, our liberties, have been bought at 
a fearful price, when we think of the sufferings of our 
martyred soldiers. Let us think of them. It was for 
us they bore hunger and cold and nakedness. They 
might have had food and raiment and comforts, if 
they would have deserted our cause, — and they did 
not. Cut off from all communication with home or 
friends or brethren, — dragging on the weary months, 
apparently forgotten, — still they would not yield, 
they w^ould not fight against us j and so for us at last 
they died. 

What return can we make them ? Peace has come, 
and we take up all our blessings restored and bright- 
ened ; but if we look, we shall see on every blessing 
a bloody cross. 

When three brave men broke through the ranks of 



RD- 17 



The Noble Army of Martyrs. 311 

the enemy, to bring to King David a draught from 
the home-well, for which he longed, the generous- 
hearted prince would not drink it, but poured it out 
as an offering before the Lord ; for he said, " Is not 
this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of 
their lives ? " 

Thousands'of noble hearts have been slowly con- 
sumed to secure to us the blessings we are rejoicing 
in. 

We owe a duty to these our martyrs, — the only 
one we can pay. 

In every place, honored by such a history and ex- 
ample, let a monument be raised at the public ex- 
pense, on which shall be inscribed the names of those 
who died for their country, and the manner of their 
death. 

Such monuments will educate our young men in 
heroic virtue, and keep alive to future ages the flame 
of patriotism. And thus, too, to the aching heart of 
bereaved love shall be given the only consolation of 
which its sorrows admit, in the reverence which is paid 
to its lost loved ones. 

THE END. 



Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 



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